April 3, 2007

Work/Life Balance

In thinking through what this weeks message should be, something was brought to mind that all VAs go through --- work/life balance.

It's hard for Virtual Assistants to stop their work because it's right there in the home. You feel you're "with your family" because you're in the same house. Why should they get upset that you aren't sitting right next to them watching TV or outside playing with them? You're there. They can come into the office anytime they want to talk to you.

As business owners, we need to set time aside for our family and ourselves.

Now, how do you figure out how much time you're working and how much time you're spending with your family/yourself? Get a small notebook. Keep track of the time you spend in your office or working and right it down. Right down how much time you spend with your family each day. Keep this going for one month solid - that includes the weekends for us that can't keep away from the computer ;). At the end of the month, calculate your hours. If you aren't spending at least 60-70 hours per month with your family, you're spending too much time working. If you calculate it out, that's approximately 2 - 2 1/2 hours per day. That's really not a lot of time to spend with the people that are the reason why you're working.

If you're not spending at least that much time with them, you need to be rethinking things a little. If you're spending that much or more, you've definitely figured out how to balance work/life.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's funny that you came up with 2.5 hours. I homeschool. I figured out the amount of time by law that I need to be educating my kids is 2.5 hours. I loved having that guideline because I knew if something was going on and I missed a day, I'd "owe" them 2.5 hours that I knew I had to make up on the weekends.