Businesses are not expected to close down during holidays. Every entrepreneurs’ struggle is how to balance spending time with their family and running their business especially during the holidays. Holidays are best spent when everyone is available and great family moments are shared together. It’s difficult for entrepreneurs to determine when they should answer that last email and when they should power down to spend time with family and friends.
It’s no secret that you want to squeeze in as much holiday cheer with your family and loved ones as you can. But, that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice all of the work-related projects, tasks, and deadlines you have sitting in the docket. So, identifying some helpful tactics for better work/life balance is essential—especially once the holidays roll around.
Below are some helpful tips for maintaining a successful balance between your professional and personal lives, and get ready to enjoy the holidays—without obsessing over the work you left behind!
- Plan Ahead
Knowing what to do ahead of time will be of great help to your business and family life. Effective prior planning helps you be ahead of time and remove some stress off your plate. Planning gets you organized and helps you save time.
Sit down with your calendar and set up dates to accomplish each task before and during the holidays. Prioritize each task and work on the most important and big projects before the holidays to avoid losing customers whiles you are away.
- Schedule Everything
Here’s the thing about attempting to achieve work/life balance: for some reason, we still let work take way more priority. That’s hardly balance, is it? Yes, you need to pay the bills and uphold your professional reputation. But, you also need to spend the best time with your family during the holidays.
My trick for making sure that I’m actually spending a good time with my family and my business is that I schedule absolutely everything. Use your calendar to pencil in important work meetings and deadlines and also mark in your personal and social engagements. That weekly exercise class you’re dying to attend and that family Christmas movie night you still haven’t gotten around to? You should mark them down in your calendar on the date and time you plan to do them, and then make sure you honor them as you would any other professional appointment.
Your planner will help to hold you accountable for not only your professional duties, but your personal relaxation time as well. The key is just to stick to it.
- Explore a Flexible Schedule
Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in a day and your schedule could be tight. Finding time to attend your child’s holiday concert in the middle of the workday and sticking to your standard work schedule can be difficult. You can skip some work tasks and attend important family concerts/dinner because this is the best time to show your family how important they are to you.
Yes, you’ll need to work just as many hours and ensure that your projects are completed on time. Being able run the dishwasher while you’re on a conference call or put a batch of holiday cookies in the oven while you answer some emails can not only help you get more done, but also make you feel a little more balanced in the process
- Delegate some tasks
As with my other tips, this is another one that is good to do year-round, but is especially important this time of the year. If you have a team, use them. Don’t be afraid to delegate just because you want everything to be perfect or feel like you have to do it all yourself. Find out people who have some free time during the holidays and let them handle some tasks for you. You can also let other family members or friends who are less busy help you out finish things up on time – cooking with your friends will be fun.
- Be Intentional
There’s no arguing with the fact that technology is great. But, it can also make it pretty difficult to ever actually leave the office. You scroll through your emails while you’re decorating the tree. You take a phone call in the middle of family dinner. And, you check your meeting schedule while you’re wrapping presents.
You might think of this as effective multi-tasking. But, you’re actually just working constantly. Even worse? These frequent work distractions are causing you to miss out on valuable quality time with your family and loved ones.
If you want to achieve successful work/life balance—especially around the holidays—then you need to make an effort to be intentional with your time. When the day is done, leave your work in the office. Actually having adequate time to enjoy the holidays with your family is sure to help you feel more balanced!
Maintaining an adequate balance between your personal and professional lives is always a challenge for entrepreneurs. It becomes more difficult during the holiday season, when you feel an increased desire for more personal and family time.
Try your best to apply these tips to help you stick to all of your work deadlines, while still being able to enjoy the holidays with your family.
