Every day, we juggle work and family to manage our home and work lives all the time. But, as a small business owner, this is even more compounded. We have the drive to start our business but are torn between taking care of our young children. It is a real dilemma and may not be resolved in this one post. But, we can sure try! Right? Remember, there’s no need to feel guilty about this process, we all go through it. I came out the other side and learned a lot of different tips to make this process much more smooth. So, today, to help you get into a groove of being an entrepreneur, I will discuss my favorite tips.
9 Tips to Juggle Work and Family While being a Successful Small Business Owner
Split up your day instead of working for 9 – 5.
If you work from home for your small business, try splitting up your workday at the times your kids are at activities. Install a curtain that will divide the room into different spaces if you don’t have a separate room for your office.
Pick the right office space to minimize distractions.
Make sure your office is in a place where you can isolate yourself when you need to get things done.
Pick conference call hours that correspond to your child’s sleep schedule.
If you need to talk to people on the phone or take part in webinars, set work hours and make sure everyone knows what they are for each day. Add work hours to your signature section in your emails.
Add 15 minutes of time between meeting when you travel.
If you work outside of your office, make sure you factor in travel time. Extra time will elevate stress and may give you back some time if every meeting runs on time.
Pick a few times a day to check email and do admin work.
I find that checking email in the morning, then again at lunch and then again before I leave for the day works nicely. You don’t need to check email every hour.
Get together at least once a month with like-minded small business owners.
Create a moms or parents entrepreneur support group with other small business owners and talk regularly about how to improve home and work situations. Creating a playgroup with moms where the kids play together, and the moms can talk about their struggles and solutions with their business works wonderfully. Getting feedback and advice does help.
Get help from others when you need focus time.
Ask friends and family to watch your kids when you have to go to important meetings or activities. I found that hiring a babysitter for a few hours a week allowed me the extra time to get the list of incompleted focus tasks done. For $20/week, I was able to assign 2 hours of time that was just for my business. It was a Godsend.
Setup a day during the week to plan for next week.
Sunday was always a good day to do this. Using a daily planner allowed for enough space to fill in what needed to be done for my family and my business. You can even make a line down the page and use one column for work and one column for home tasks. Being proactive with your home and work schedule will allow you to see the big picture and help you find the blocks of time that are open to adding activities.
Add smaller tasks (duration time: 15 – 20 minutes) to your schedule.
If you use an electronic calendar and can create recurring appointments, Make these recurring appointments these smaller tasks like taking a shower, eating lunch, etc. Don’t forget to add an alarm too! As parents, we tend to forget to take care of ourselves so doing this will remind us what needs priority.
Whatever you do to improve juggling work and family, choose only to change one thing in your day at a time. See if it works. If it gives you more free time to spend with family, great! Then, try another tip and see if that works. Be sure to allow enough time to see if it will help make your business run more smoothly. Not every tip from this post will work for your situation so be flexible and nonjudgmental on yourself and you will be able to make the process of owning your own business a successful one. The benefits of spending time and organizing your day, will allow you time to detach at the end of the each day. Visit these additional posts to help you with this topic.
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Now it’s your turn. What tips do you have to manage your work and family lives? Please join in the conversation by writing a comment below. I would love to hear from you.
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Great advice! It almost feels embarrassing to add recurring mundane tasks to the schedule, but it works! After a while, you don’t need the reminder, but having it on your list ensures that you don’t forget until it becomes ingrained as a habit.
It will definitely be interesting when my husband and I start a little family, because he and I are just so used to focusing on the tasks WE HAVE TO DO and then we focus on going on adventures just for us. But when a lil’ babe is involved… We are going to really have to STOP what we are doing and think about things to do with that little one too! Totally life changing!
I agree. There are a lot of things we did before our kids were around that we just let go of post-baby. Good luck in the process. And, enjoy it, it doesn’t last long. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.