How to Achieve a Better Work-Life Balance

Today, we’re more connected than we’ve ever been. What with laptops, smartphones and tablets padding our bags, there’s never been a better time to be a remote worker. Add to this the profusion of tools and applications, like Dropbox, Gmail and Skype – all of which put our vital files and messages within arm’s reach wherever we are – and you can see why the lines between work and life are more blurred than ever.

As a mother, wife and professional virtual assistant, I often find myself working when I perhaps shouldn’t be. Not because I can’t manage my time – I can do that standing on my head – but instead because I’m always attentive to my clients’ needs. For example, if I get an email in the evening from one of my clients asking me for some out of hour’s assistance, I’ll more often than not oblige.

An article I recently read on the Huffington Post really got me thinking about work-life balance and was ultimately the inspiration for this post.

So how can you start achieving a better work-life balance today? Here are my top tips:

Hire a Virtual Assistant

Oh come on, don’t look so surprised – it was always going to be on this list. Not because it’s my livelihood, but rather that I genuinely believe in the real value that most Virtual Assistants afford for their clients.

Hiring a virtual assistant is something you should absolutely consider if you find yourself spending too much time on the mundane tasks and not enough time enjoying the fruits of your labour.

Virtual Assistants like myself can help people like you get back to doing what you do best – growing your business.

Scrutinize your workload

Time is our most valuable commodity and we can’t simply buy more of it. That’s why you need to ensure that you are using every minute of yours in the most productive way possible.

Scrutinize every task you carry out and decide if they all add real value. The ones that don’t should be offloaded to someone else, either internally or externally.

Learn to switch off

What I’m referring to here is your multitude of devices. The gadgets that make you constantly contactable both day and night are the things that make you super-efficient, yet inevitably destroy a small part of your balance.

Simple things like turning your smartphone off during dinner or if you’re on holiday, leaving your tablet in the hotel room and not taking it to the swimming pool. Out of sight really is out of mind, right?

Respect your self-imposed boundaries

You’ll never realise a better work-life balance if you cannot learn to respect your own boundaries. As with any change it will seem slightly alien in the beginning but you will learn to embrace going forward.

Routines are a great way to teach yourself, to adopt different ways of working. You almost want your boundaries to become habits. Unwritten rules that you don’t even need to think about because they come so naturally.

If you don’t respect your own boundaries then other people definitely won’t…