How to Achieve Work-Life Balance?

Creating Harmony in Your Business

Sometimes work-life balance can feel like a goal that only some can achieve and sometimes it feels so far-fetched that it's never truly real in the first place.

Well, I am here to tell you and testify that work-life balance does exist and you can achieve it. Plus, I can offer you the formula to get there (now that I have fully tested it myself). 

If that sounds like your jam, stick around for the full breakdown. 

Work-life balance is the harmony and melody that makes everything feel a little more effortless. No more burnout cycles, limited overwhelm, and a confidence that makes you feel grateful for how you get to spend your time each day. 

THIS, this is my bread and butter. So let’s dive into how we can achieve this 4-leafed clover in the simplest way possible.

My equation for work-life balance is as follows:

Stress-Management + Time-Management = Work-Life Balance

What Is Stress-Management?

Stress-management is when we are trying to incorporate a variety of stress relieving strategies into our daily routines so that stress affects our day-to-day less. 

Stress is never truly gone. We live in a world where stressors can hit you from every angle at any point of the day: from ads trying to convince you that your house is going to burn down without their product or wondering if a payment went through correctly. 

No matter how big or small the stress trigger, your body will respond by activating a stress response cycle and trying to get you to safety. Remember that stress response cycles are neither good or bad, they are just there to help you survive.

We often put stress-management last on our to-do lists because it feels like it's not necessary. As I just stated, stress is everywhere so why take on another tasks to mitigate it?

But stress-management is ESSENTIAL to helping you move through life without a random explosion or breakdown or burnout cycle. If we don’t complete these stress response cycles, they build on top of one another until you are forced to deal with them (usually at the most inconvenient time). For me, that time was in front of my students as a panic attack threatened to take me down while writing on the board. 0/5 stars, don’t recommend. 

Plus, chronic stress can both change the composition of your brain and manifest as physical symptoms. No one wants that. Bye bye gastrointestinal issues from all my classroom overworking. To start working on some stress relief practices today, download my FREE Stress Relief Toolkit to get you started.

What Is Time-Management?

Time-management may seem so isolated from stress-management, however, it is uniquely entwined with this partner in crime. Time-management is what it sounds like though, it is where you are more aware of your time and how you intentionally plan to use your energy. 

You have the same amount of energy and that energy can vary by day or by week (especially for those of us with a 28-30 day cycle). We use time-management to prioritize what we need to get done, how long it will take, and how we become most efficient with our time. 

Strategies for time-management may include the POMODORO technique, or a distraction-free workspace, or using time-blocking. There are so many different strategies, but we have to learn which ones work best for our productivity times. 

I call this the Productivity Profile. Determine when you are most productive naturally and work within those time frames. If you want to learn more about exactly how to do this (and use a bunch of other awesome time-management hacks for online business owners), check out the Time Management Workbook here. 

Time-management includes a lot of things, but it also overlaps with our stress-management strategies. For instance, having boundaries on your time is both a time-management and a stress-management strategy. 

But the effect is that when you have a better understanding of how you are spending your time, you can more easily devote extra energy toward your stress management practice. 

What Is Business Efficiency?

I don’t know if you know this, but my favorite word for the longest time has been efficiency, and I mean since I was a teen long time. Now you know for sure the amount of organizational nerd that I am.

Efficiency is how we can get more stuff done in less time and less energy. That sounds like absolute bliss to me. As such, business efficiency is when we are able to incorporate systems that decrease the amount of time spent on routine tasks and increase the amount of productivity (and profit) that comes from that time.

Doesn’t that sound like a big win?

Business efficiency is an extension of our time-management section. You are using similar aspects, but here we are expanding on those strategies to turn them into full-fledged systems that are streamlined and effective.

Once we have systems in place with our business, we start seeing that we have more time and energy to devote to what is important (i.e. things that only your creative brain can do). Everything else can be automated or delegated with a good system. 

Work-Life Balance as an Online Business Owner

So let’s bring this all back together.

Stress Management is where we are adding stress relief into our daily priorities (Because you matter. Repeat that with me…I’m waiting). These can be through different self-care practices, body check-ins, or a variety of other ways that complete the stress responses you have experienced. 

Time-Management gives you the space to be more efficient in your business so that you don’t have to be chained to your desk as well as add in business systems that make everything that much simpler. 

Work-life balance is the harmony in which these two different aspects are work simultaneously to help you build the life of your dreams. Stress Management allows you to be more productive (because you are less stressed and not as easily overwhelmed by tasks), while time management gives you the space and time to dedicate to more stress relief activities. Both of these together allow you to build both the business and the personal life that you went into business to have.

As such, I find that these two simple categories are the most essential when you are trying to run and grow your business. Without one or the other, you are doomed to burnout cycles and less profit. Remember that you are your business, so if you go down, it does too.

You’re Not Alone

The best part about all of this information is that even though we are so used to our isolated islands as online solopreneurs, we don’t have to take on all these new skills alone.

I have created a variety of resources to help you get a head start on designing your own unique systems for success. We can even work together on a Signature System Build to help with that business efficiency. 

You don’t need to research everything yourself and wonder how it all applies to you or how you can DIY it. Instead, add quick and accessible masterclasses, 1:1 support, and downloadable resources all in one place to help you reach your goals.