We’re all busy. Some of us are entrepreneurs, or have partners, or have kids, or are committed to a million different other obligations. No matter what hats you exchange throughout your day, we all have the same 24 hours and it never seems to be enough. If you’re like me, you’re likely trying to find how to find the balance between work and life.

Today I wanted to share with you what my personal tips are for how I seek balance between work and life.

Being an entrepreneur I personally understand what it takes every day to keep a business running and thriving. I know that there’s not a lot of free time, especially in the beginning. However your personal life requires a lot from you as well.

While many people shy away from the term “work-life balance” these days, the truth is that both have to find a way to coexist. You’ll never be able to turn off your personal life completely or your work completely. There are times when we make it more stressful for ourselves than it needs to be.

How to Balance Work and Life

Carve Out Time for All the Things that Matter to You

Sometimes this takes getting a little crafty. For example, one of the aspects of my business includes engaging on Instagram. When I’m waiting in line at Starbucks every morning I will use that time to knock that out. Another example is when I go to pick up my son from pre-school, I will intentionally get there 5-10 minutes early to read.

There are certainly weeks where one aspect of my life will require more out of me and not allow for the others to really hold a lot of time, however when that happens I am super intentional about making sure that I carve out extra time the following week for the things that I missed.

Define Your Hours and Location

When I first started out as an entrepreneur working from home, it could have been really easy to say “Alright, I’m never putting on real clothes or showing up professionally ever again.” (and for a while I struggled with letting this become my reality.)

However, I knew the things that helped me to show up for my business in the best way possible. It included certain elements from my corporate job that helped me stay focused and on top of things. These elements consisted of certain rules to abide by.

So, I sat down and created my own. They included that I needed to be in my home office by a certain time, out of pajamas, and staying there until a certain time. While these rules have shifted and adjusted as I’ve learned what helps me work best, I still define my hours and location on my calendar for when I’m doing what and where.

Know What Matters and What Doesn’t

I spent my entire first year in business doing work that didn’t matter. There was so much I did in my business that wasn’t important compared to other things. What I have learned is the number of things that I actually have to do in my business is pretty small. There’s a lot of things that can be automated, systemized, or outsourced. It’s unbelievable the amount of free time that comes up once you do this. The stuff you need to do in your business is the hard stuff: laying out the vision, community building, etc. The things we end up doing is more of the easy stuff because it’s not as overwhelming. However, it’s not the stuff that we as the business owner need to be doing.

My challenge to you is to sit down throughout your work day and write out every single thing you’re doing. Next, I want you to go through this list and see what things you can systematize, automate or delegate.

This will give you a much better idea for what things you actually need to be doing in your business. It may take you a few months to be able to outsource and afford a team, however you will be able to see that about 90% of the things on your list can be passed off so that you can do the part of your business that only you can do.

Want to learn even more ways to level up in your business? Get access to ALL of my FREE templates, checklists, resources and guides all in one place- the Biz Money Library!