Is it increasingly hard to manage both Life & Work?
I spent quite a bit of time last year talking about find that quality ‘Life Blend’, as my VA work life is expanding, I’ve had to revisit my beliefs and try to reinforce what I know is important, so I thought I’d ask some important questions and ask you to think about it again. Holiday season is fast approaching and it’s really important to make sure that we spend time with our family & friends or even just time on ourselves. Christmas will be here before we know it and we’ll be worn out again so here goes……..
Are you in a job that leaves you overwhelmed? Do you find that you have to take work home? If so is it seriously encroaching on your family and social life?
Sometimes it is hard to take a step back and see a solution as to how you can balance your life fairly between work responsibilities and personal time.
With the age of austerity comes greater pressure as staff numbers have to be cut but workloads do not decrease leaving fewer people with more responsibility. Some people will then take work home with them just to keep up
Or you may have your own business and you find that increasingly it blends into what would be valuable time with your family. Do you accept this as an inevitable part of being your own boss or could you be doing something differently to manage your time?
Here are some tips
- Analyse your workload, are your systems efficient, or is there duplication? Can some operations be merged?
- Are there repetitive tasks that you find yourself doing over and over again? If so can these be automated on IT? Initially it may take time to set up but in the long run will improve efficiency
- Only check your emails twice a day – being continually connected is distracting and it takes you longer to get through your to do list, so being email free will help you focus on the tasks in hand
- Do one thing at a time, focus on one area, don’t try and multi-task it is counterproductive
- Only attend meetings that relate directly to what you do, sitting in two hour meetings that have ten minutes of relevance to you are pointless
- Keep away from social media or dedicate a half a day a week to posting your social media messages using software such as Hootsuite that allows you to schedule your postings
- Outsource – are there things you don’t want to do or are better done by someone else, if so consider outsourcing, it saves heaps of time and relieves stress
- Limit TV time to watching only what you have planned to watch
- Plan days out, getting away from the home takes away the temptation to ‘work’
As in my previous blogs, utilizing the skills of a Virtual Assistant can be perfect in helping to achieve your own unique Life Blend, call Joanne today on 07928 228764 or email joanne@executivevpa.co.uk for a no obligation chat about what resources are available to you 🙂
