The strain of balancing an intense career, having a family life, and fitting in regular holidays can feel too much to bear. It’s as though there’s never long enough, and yet, the calendar becomes fully booked. Methods of exercising some kind of control over that maelstrom of responsibilities can be the difference between feeling one step behind at all times and being able to have the life in which you’ve worked so hard at creating.
5 strategies for work-life balance:
1. Managing conflicting schedules
An executive calendar doesn’t include only meetings and deadlines. School pickups happen, flights are delayed, time-zone-leaping conference calls take place, and sometimes three reminders chime at once. It’s not realistic to rely on memory, and dual digital calendars have become most families’ little-unheralded heroes. When all members can see who is doing what at what time, fewer slips through the cracks. Parents even set reminders for apparently minuscule but essential information, like bringing snacks to soccer practice or prebooking airport parking. What appears to be an imperceptible adjustment can eliminate the perpetual interruptions and distractions and bring focus back.
2. Devices to lift weight off shoulders
Technology is not a solution to everything, but it can eliminate layers of anxiety from day-to-day life. Travel programs to manage boarding passes, cloud systems to transmit documents instantaneously, and budget programs to label expenditures all unlock energies to be focused elsewhere. To those who run business gear outside of town, even as little as one trailer tracking system can be significant. It doesn’t seem particularly revolutionary, but it quietly resolves an entire class of anxiety, freeing room to think about people rather than property.
3. Remedies for an inflexible schedule
The business meeting could last overnight, and culminate in a parent walking into a wake-up shift at home, or it could overlap a child’s birthday, as it might ours in September. This is where routines become as valuable as software. Some have a “home comforts” bag they never travel without: an identical cup of tea, a small blanket, or a comforting scent that makes an alien room less jarring. Others tape their young child’s bedtime stories in advance, to include in an evening routine, even from another city. These small pleasures fill in blanks and smooth out jolts to and from home for all concerned.
4. Prioritizing without guilt
The work doesn’t cease to observe the family calendar, and the family doesn’t disappear as deadlines approach. What most effective leaders have in common is proficiency at prioritizing without being overwhelmed by guilt. That may mean saying no to an attractive project if it means taking time away from a partner who’s overbooked, or not going to a networking dinner to take in a child’s recital. The truth is, work-life balance means those most critical items receive adequate time, and the rest go as they can.
5. Bringing it all together
The best systems work-life balance, practicality, and heart. One family uses a joint calendar, two cherished apps, an on-call babysitting backup, and one to two technical tools to keep work stuff protected. These tools only exist as an afterthought to allow space for relationships and rest. Boundaries aren’t for squeezing more out of most days; they’re there to allow space for what’s most important.
