Separating Work and Family Life
These days it can feel as if you’re always in the office. With cell phones pinging notifications about texts and emails no matter where you are, you’re always within reach. The urge to respond to that email from a client or that inquiry about a project can be too great. However, you should never neglect your important private time.
Work Smarter
One of the simplest ways to maximise your family life is to maximise your working hours. Make sure you take time to plan each day and make good use of calendar apps to remind yourself of important dates.
It’s also a good idea to learn what shortcuts you can take to make work-life flow easier. For example, spending some time to create templates for Word documents or PowerPoints might seem like a huge time sink now, but it’ll save your hundreds of hours in the future.
Don’t Bring Work Home
Sometimes a project unavoidably requires more time. You should, however, avoid bringing work home as much as you can. Turning your home into another office space prevents you from ever truly settling. Bringing projects home can also be habit-forming. You want to avoid getting into the routine of clocking off from one office only to enter another.
If you find you’re constantly bringing work home, then you might benefit from using the Time Management Matrix to better prioritise your tasks.
Leave Work Worries at Work
You should aim to make your home a work-free zone and that includes worries and stress caused by work. It’s common for people to ask their partner’s “How was your day?” but try and limit such conversations to a simple “Not bad” or “Fine”.
The reason for this is if you get home and begin letting off steam about the client that irritated you today, or the computer programme that crashed three times, that anger and irritation will play on your mind and cause disruptions to enjoyable socialising or family time.
Set Clear Boundaries
Freelancers and small business owners especially often have difficulties with setting boundaries. You want to be reachable by your clients so as not to lose business. However, being ‘too available’ can result in you writing emails when you wanted to spend time with the kids.
You might want to consider setting an Out of Office note on your email letting a client know when they’re likely to receive a reply. Redirect work calls to voicemail with a message indicating your working hours. Try and keep to this as much as possible. It’s not rude, it’s expected.
Make the Most of Your Home Life
When you’re at home, make sure you’ve always got something to keep your mind away from work. Whether it’s a hobby, blasting aliens in a video game, binge-watching the new season of Orange is the New Black on Netflix or spending thirty minutes on a treadmill.
The more active you can keep your mind at home, the less inclined you’ll be to check your voicemail or email, and the easier it will be to set boundaries and separate your two lives.
Make non-work plans and stick to them. Even an “I’m going to play my next six games on Football Manager” is a better plan than “I’ve not got a lot to do, let’s check my phone.”
