I always wanted to know how to balance time between work and family when I started my online business as an entrepreneur because I had people who lost one or the other if not done right.
One of the main reasons people become entrepreneurs is to spend more time with their families. This is especially true for people doing Internet marketing or running a home business.
I feel there is nothing better in life than when you can follow your dreams. That said, we sometimes find it hard to find the right balance in the various essential aspects of our lives.
While managing all the essential aspects of life is crucial, few people can make informed decisions. Both careers and family can be very demanding, and we need to stay centered at such times.
Striking for the ideal balance in life is beneficial in ways. Simply put, it helps you stay focused on your business goals without causing any compromise to your relationships.
So, the following are some tips to consider when balancing work and family life as an entrepreneur.
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Set Weekends and Holidays As Family Time
Yes! It would help if you considered reserving the weekends and holidays for your family. In particular, these days are convenient in many ways. And the best approach is to assign a day in the week for grocery shopping and laundry. I have people use up their entire weekend doing these two simple chores.
Setting aside holidays and weekends means everyone’s schedule is free simultaneously. Therefore, this provides the perfect opportunity to spend leisure time together as a family. I have found going on a small road trip helps.
Eat At Least One Meal With Your Family
If you are as committed to your business as I am, you may find yourself working overtime to pursue your entrepreneurial goals. While this might be an excellent form of time management, it may also be denying you quality time with the family.
Therefore, consider setting aside some time to engage with the family during meals. Sharing meals is one of the essential techniques to spend quality time with the family.
A good recommendation would be in the early morning during breakfast or at night for supper. You can even spice it up further by helping prepare and share special meals during these times.
Related Video On How to Make Work-life Balance.
Avoid Addressing Work During Family Time
Once you have sat down with the family, consider detaching from your devices, including your smartphones and computers. These devices can be huge distractions, mainly if you constantly communicate about your business, as I was with mine at Wealthy Affiliate.
No more responding to email or message notifications when you spend precious time with the family. Addressing work issues may compromise the quality of time spent together, and it may also communicate the wrong things. In this case, it might show that you value your career more than your family.
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Work Smarter
Besides that, another helpful suggestion for your work needs would be to work smarter in general. In this case, it might mean completing any tasks or responsibilities on time or even earlier. Using this approach will help you gain sufficient time to get down and spend time with your family members.
If you do any Internet marketing, it can be challenging to know when you are working or not. Here is what I mean by that.
Over the years, I’ve seen people work on their businesses considerably longer than they need to. Part of the problem is that they’re not effective when they’re working.
Social media marketing has become one of the biggest time killers in productivity. If you enjoy social media marketing, you can spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter, for example, thinking you’re working when you’re having a good time personally.
Minutes can turn into hours, which can rob you of Family time because it adds to the amount of time you need to be working.
One of the best ways is to use a timer to complete specific tasks. Your smartphone probably has an app for this already.
You can just set a certain amount of time that you want to spend on social media marketing and then really focus on the marketing aspects of social media, getting it done before the timer goes off. This time-saver can add to the amount of time you spend with your family.
Combine Business And Family
When is it too early to get your family involved in your business? I say get them involved from day one if you possibly can.
Many home businesses are ideal for husband and wife to run together. You get more done, but you’re doing it together, combining family and business time.
You can even involve the kids in some aspects of your business if you want to research various ways. This is an excellent way to help them learn how to earn their own money, and there are tax benefits that come into play here as well.
I’m always amazed at how technically savvy young kids are today. You can’t teach them to do some Internet marketing right on their tablets and keep track of the time and pay them for it.
Another thing to consider is what your spouse is good at and what you’re good at and then focus on that. You can then outsource the rest when you’re doing what you like and are good at best. Then you have a very effective combination of work and family time!
Final Thoughts
There is no reason for poor decision-making when balancing work and family as an entrepreneur. It’s essential to strike the perfect balance because this has various benefits.
Striking a balance between these two aspects of life can skyrocket your success in many ways. The best way to achieve the given balance would be to make informed decisions.
Get everyone involved at all ages, and then you are maximizing family and business all day, every day. If you can’t do that, schedule family time every day in the ways, I have laid out in this article, and watch your business explode with combined efforts.
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Hi Bishop,
I have been an entrepreneur all my life and I really enjoyed your post.
Your comment ‘I know one of the main reasons people become an entrepreneur is to spend more time with their family.’ is so true.
However, when I 1st started out, I never had any time for my self. I was non-stop working.
I related not-working to not making money, so if I stopped work, the money stopped, because everything revolved around me.
I was scared to let go.
In time I let other people do some of the work and my time began to free up and as I gave trust to the people working with me, they grew and the business grew and I had more time to myself.
I totally agree with having time when you do not talk about work or money, especially around the table.
So awesome post!
Tim Bennett
Hey Tim, thank you for your kind words and insights on balancing time between work and family. Is something that we ought to pay attention to before it causes damage to our lives. Glad that you see my point and you know what you needed to do to get more time. Good for you.
These are all excellent suggestions but I think among the toughest to implement would be disconnecting from email/social media/phones..!
We have become so dependent on our various devices that with some people, especially the younger ones, it’s become a personal habit – like scratching your nose or rubbing your eyes. People do it (check their devices) almost sub-consciously, as a compulsion.
I think there would need to be an agreed way to manage this – for example: to have a drawer in a different room where everyone agrees to leave whatever device they use for the duration of the Family Time.
The younger ones would complain bitterly at first, but they would probably get used to it..!
Cheers,
Martin.
Thank you for the comment, Martin. And yes, some of these can be very challenging to implement, but are doable if you take your business seriously and how far you would like it to go to help your family. all good things require sacrifice.
With the new generation, it will be harder for them to put down their cellphones than the people that grow up without them. So yes, you do have to make certain demand on leaving your devise behind, if you demand quality time with your family. Take care.
This is a great post that brings up one of the pain points people experience when they begin down the entrepreneurial journey – time management. It’s easy to ignore your family and focus only on work, but it’s not recommended if you want long term success and happiness.
Dave, I am glad that you get value here and see my point in this post. It really so important for us to know how to balance time between work and family. I lose my family because of this. It is very painful and sometimes hard to recover. I learned my lessons. that is the reason I wrote this post so that others would not make the same mistake as I did. Thank you for your input.
Your article addresses some really important points. I could relate to this and agree with your suggestions in how to best balance time between work and family.
I mostly work from home, and at first I found it difficult to balance spending time with my children and doing all that was necessary to run my business. This lasted good few months, when I had to rethink how I approached the whole situation.
Now I try to do all that needs to be done (this is of course impossible when you run your own business, but as near as), and when the children are home, I am only with them without running to my computer every five minutes to do ‘just one more thing’.
Since then, we’ve been much happier and less stressed out. So, in this case, a bit of planning goes a long way!
Thank you for the feedback here on balancing time between work and family which is an important part of our daily lives when building a business from home.
As we use these strategies we will soon find out what works and what does not. By using these strategies, we will eventually come up with a game plan so that the family has quality to me, and you building a business is consistent.
I have found that letting your family into the business, is your best bet and turned out to be more rewarding that keeping them away. Thank you for the comment.
I have been running my own businesses for years, and when my kids were born, I opened a home daycare and focused all my energy on kids activities for their entire childhood! Family is definitely number 1!! Now that they are grown, I have my grandchildren, so I have my family and friends time, and then my online marketing time. I love both!!
Babs
Glad to see that you have time for both and that your balance is not a problem. Thank you for the comment and good luck with your online marketing business.
David,
I have always tried to get more balance into my life with work, marriage, children, and find time for myself in there someplace. Reading through your how to balance time between work and family offers some helpful suggestions.
The video you included at the end provides so much more in the way of looking at what can be done to accomplish successfully life balance. Stop and actually write down all the important things for you and I believe you will find numerous ways to cut out all the things taking away from the time you need to spend with your family but still work in a proficient manner.
Thank you for all the suggestions here and hoping you will enlighten us with more ways to organize our lives.
Susan
Susan. I had challenges in the past and it cost me. I do not want others to make the same mistakes I have made in the past. You cannot think that your family would understand because you are building a business so that they would have the lifestyle that most people dream about.
I wish I had these suggestions back then, but now I am using it and it is paying off now and my family is much more happier and we are catching up on all the time that we had lost back then. Please use them and yes, I will update what is working today. Thank you for stopping by.
Great insight on balance lifestyle choice.I would say every thing are equally important for me regarding on work, family ,friend.It is quite hard to really get the balance for all of this.I think the cause may vary to individual ,for people who had work on reserve schedule (night swift) might face a great deal of consequences .Paying the price on living the different time zone so to say.The chase and pressure of work environment nowadays are getting stiffer .In order to squeeze the time.I think efficiency is the key of everything.
It do varies depending on the individual, but the balance is still needed and should not be taken lightly. i was a victim for not balancing my work and family and I paid the price. my work is still there doing great but my family is not. That is a big price to pay cause i thought i was working hard for us.
Neglect can be risky and long-term and before you realize it, it may be too far gone to try to fix it, or make up for the lost time. this happens with both parents, think about a single parent trying to juggle two jobs to provide for his/her family? It is something to consider. Thank you for your feedback.
Thanks for this reminder concerning balancing time for work and family. I agree with you that social media is a time killer. It can actually be a family killer. Robbing the family to spend time together. One time when we ate somewhere an expensive -restaurant, another family of six were there eating in a buffet style eat-all-you-can. We were so noisy while they were very silent. All their faces where in front of their phones or tabs. Thank you for sharing this, hoping others will follow what you share.
Spending quality time with your family is crucial to your well being and can even boost your online business if done correctly. All the information I have shared is through trial and error and what has worked for countless marketers in the business.
What you have shared at the restaurant is very common today, it also happen at the dinner table with the rise in cell-phones which is hard to set aside when having family gatherings. glad I was able to bring value here, Eli. Take care and all the best.
Hi David,
Great post.
It’s all about managing your time isn’t it.
I am a little different to you, where although I would love to just work from home, I am juggling two jobs, still having to leave the home to work.
You have many great points/tips here and yes, organise the chores that need doing so you can have free weekends and quality time with family. My time management skills aren’t too flash, but now I shall give it more thought, plan one week at a time and take some quality time!
Thanks
Michele
Michele, thank you for your kind words and your input on why balancing time between work and family is so important.
Having two jobs would be challenging and this is why I started my online business so that I can replace my full-time job and have more time with my family. At first when I started part-time on my online business it was difficult, but with careful planning I was able to gain that quality time back.
Sacrifice is key to building a successful business, but if done with one goal in mind, the rewards can be huge for the entire family. Please feel free to contact me if you need help with anything. I take this business seriously and I will do whatever it takes to see others have the same success. Talk to you soon!
It’s not always easy to combine work with family and way to often I find myself guilty of doing too much work related things when I’m at home. Thanks for writing this article as you give some excellent tips in how I can improve the quality time with my family.
Jurgen, glad that you got some value here, and feel free to use these tips to give quality time to both your business and family. Please do not make the mistakes that i have made in the past. All the best!
You are spot on that striking a balance is important. Family is the infrastructure that keeps you functioning. Whatever you do, don’t lose that. Your suggestion of sharing a meal is excellent. No matter how busy you are, everyone has to eat! And you offer a very good tip to not talk business during designated family time. Thank you for giving us all wise advice and good reminders to keep ourselves balanced.
JB, one of my mentor says: ” wherever you are, be there, if you at work, be at work. If you on a vacation or with the family be there. You cant think about work when you are with your family, cause you would think about family when you at work. You will just mess it all up.” – Jim Rohn.
If we do this right, it make make the difference between failure and success with your business. so please do not take this lightly cause it will cost you in the end. thank you for stopping by.