How to achieve a better work-life balance?
So you can keep your personal and professional life separate
Do you give your personal phone to your clients? Do you have work contacts on your mobile and find it hard to separate them? Do you also reach for the phone when a client calls, even if you're at your child's school festival? If enjoying a holiday is an urban legend for you, take note, because below we talk about the importance of preserving your personal space and give you some recommendations and tools to achieve balance and be at 100% in all your facets.
An all-too-common case
Roberto is 42 years old and runs a family aluminium carpentry business. He loves his job and for years he has dedicated body and soul to it, but now his personal life takes up more space because he has become a father. In addition to nappies, bottles and lack of sleep, Roberto has encountered a problem he hadn't counted on; the difficulty of finding a balance between work and his personal and family life.
Accustomed to his 24/7 dedication in the past, many clients call him at all hours, and Roberto takes calls after hours, making it very difficult for him to disconnect and enjoy quality family time. Sound familiar?
The risks of not finding a balance
Achieving a balance between personal and professional life is about successfully distributing time, energy, responsibilities and obligations in both areas, achieving goals and living fulfilling experiences. It sounds simple, but as you know, it's not.
According to the Infojobs Digital Disconnection report, 82% of Spanish workers respond to work calls and emails outside working hours, and 75% say they are unable to disconnect. In this same study we found the profile of the professional who disconnects the least: self-employed between 45 and 65 years of age, with a position of responsibility and a vocational profile. No surprise, right?
Not being able to activate "rest mode" can have mental consequences such as stress, anxiety, irritability, periods of insomnia or sadness, and can also lead to physical symptoms such as fatigue and cardiovascular problems.
Work burnout can also affect your business. Not resting can result in a decrease in productivity and concentration, affecting work, time management and clarity in decision making.
Tips and tools for work-life balance
Setting up a business and making it grow is like watching a child grow up, but healthy time management is key. Here are some tips:
- Analyse the time invested in your business and in each task to find out if you are managing your time correctly.
- Rethink your work schedule and the tasks you can do efficiently and realistically.
- Set up a timetable.
- Avoid checking your work email outside working hours.
- If you work from home, try not to work in break times.
- Exercise or do activities in your free time.
- Don't talk about work and try not to dwell on work issues at home. Give your mind a break!
Although technology is partly to blame for the difficulty of disconnecting, it can also help, and help a lot. Here are a couple of useful and practical tools:
- Time-tracking apps can help you separate your projects by client and keep track of time spent. Some like Elorus or Harvest allow you to dissect each project into tasks.
- Rinkel's virtual switchboard allows you to set up an answering timetable and manage incoming calls outside of it as you wish: recording the message after a professional voice-over, or forwarding or transferring the call to a collaborator, also through a welcome menu. You decide! Moreover, modifying these functionalities is simple and immediate from the user dashboard, being able to customise them for each virtual number.
We hope this article will help you to think about your time, your business and how to find a balance between your work and personal life, so start today to reconcile your work and personal life while still serving your customers in a professional way! Start your free trial at Rinkel and discover the most flexible, reliable and easy-to-use virtual switchboard for freelancers, entrepreneurs and startups.
