My wife and I are business partners and we love what we do, that is to serve our clients, increase profits and help more people. When you like your work and especially if you are working from home, how do you separate business with family, in other words how do you balance family time and business?
I don’t think there is perfect balance between work and family. Every family will go through different seasons in their life. We just had a newborn and balancing family and business is quite different from the time when we just had a toddler.
Voltaire said, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” and so here are three things that we do to make every effort for the good balance between family time and business:
One: Date night
Taking time out of our busy schedule to be with each other is important not only for our marriage but for our sanity. It could be a weekend getaway, a quick meal at a restaurant or a walk in the park.
Two: Play with my son
Playing with our kids not only does our body good, it helps us bond with our children too. Just a few days ago, my wife felt lethargic since staying mostly indoors with our baby girl. A time spent walking and playing with our son at the baseball park made her feel better physically and emotionally.
She got the outdoor exercise and time alone with our son.
Three: No business talk at the dinner table
Since the smartphone invasion most of us eat and sleep with our phones. Nothing is more annoying than to have those buzzing sounds from the phone and seeing one of the family members picking the device up and chatting or replying to an email.
Guard your family dinner hours by eliminating business talk and smartphones for an hour or two each evening.
A solid one-hour quality time spent together daily is more meaningful than a sporadic half hearted conversation with your spouse or your children.
How do you balance family time and business? Please let us know.