I get it. You have about a million things to do. Maybe a billion. Before you know it you’re flailing at work or feel as if you’re failing at home. Maybe you didn’t meet your employer’s expectations. Hell, perhaps your home is beginning to feel like an episode of hoarders. I don’t even have kids yet and am still constantly working on achieving a sustainable work-life balance. Because even though I don’t have little ones running around I do have a husband, fur babies and this fledgling blog on top of a full-time job. Work-Life balance (as one of my favorite podcaster’s recently put it) is quite as mythical as a unicorn. While it can vary for everyone, here are some of the most valuable pieces of advice I can splice together. I have put them into the context of steps I think that are beneficial to take when looking to achieve a sustainable work-life balance.

6 Steps to Achieving a Sustainable Work-Life Balance

1. Do a Serious Time-Audit

If you don’t feel that you are achieving a sustainable work-life balance, chances are you’re not. We usually have some natural intuition about it.

If you want to change your habits in regards to time management, you first have to identify where you are at.

You can log it in segments of your day or do it hour by hour (which I highly suggest).

Once you have identified what you are doing in that span of time, it’s time to loosely classify it. Is it more of a life task or a work task?

2. Identify The Motivation Behind How You Spend Your Time

It’s incredibly important at this point to understand how many hours we truly have in a day. Then, what is the motivation behind how we are currently spending them?

As we all know there are 24 hours in a day. You may spend 8 of them sleeping. Then there’s work, and while this may vary for everyone, it’s going to look like 8 hours a day five days a week for many.

Without looking at any other necessary activities you are now looking at having an additional 8 hours left according to basic math. That’s crazy right? But yes, you do.

Once you’ve done the time audit in the first step, identify why you are using your additional hours this way by writing it below/in each time block.

Here are some helpful prompts to help you identify why you spend your extra hours this way:

• Are you using additional hours by necessity for self-care or additional rest?
• How much time do you spend unnecessarily on electronics? (i.e. Are you watching a favorite new episode that is airing or binge watching? Did you want to catch up with the world but are now scrolling aimlessly on social media?)
• When you are working, are you doing it as effectively as possible?

Once you have identified why you spend these extra hours the way you do, you may be surprised.

Are the ways you’re spending extra hours getting you closer to your ideal self? If not, move on to the step below.

3. Identify An Ideal Time – Table (Or Set Boundaries)

Oftentimes putting a raw number with a goal makes it much more specific. Most find you will not see results  by using the words “more” or “less” because you have little in the way of metrics to measure it. So if you change your language to hold yourself accountable, you’ve solved the problem. Try the following instead:

• “I will devote thirty minutes of my time to reading each day.”
• “Each week I want to allocate six hours for house-work.”

Either you accomplish the activity or you don’t. It’s black or white.

Or, if you feel like it would be more realistic, set up boundaries. For instance:

• “There will be no emphasis on work after 5 PM.”  (If you are working on spending time with a family member or at home this is a great boundary to set!) Or if you just want to snuggle with your fur babies after a long day, that works too!

Both can be used in flexible combination to help balance time between work and home. It’s important to note that this can be used to facilitate an ideal time structure for both everyday and when working towards additional goals.

4. Identify Your Motivation to Reinforce Your New Schedule

You will not always be self-motivated as much as you are in the beginning when something is shiny and new. However, identifying your why in regards to your behavior change will continue to push you towards your goals. Once you have identified the why behind various new activities in your time management you should reinforce them. I choose to reinforce behavior changes in two ways:

• I find that writing my most important goal(s) (in a SMART goal format) each night is helpful for me. I also have my most important goal posted throughout the house.
• I have a Dream Journal where I write goals down that are more long-term for mornings when I am seeking motivation beyond my daily/weekly or monthly goal.

There will always be a why for your change in behavior. For instance, if you are spending half a day cleaning house each week it may be because you want to be comfortable.

Or what about devoting 4 hours weekly to the gym? If you want to feel more confident in your skin  this summer, this is great.

Do you rest on Sunday? Chances are if you don’t rest methodically you will burn out, so make self-care a priority. Don’t have a lot of money but still want to practice self care? You can learn about several Science-Backed Frugal Ways to Take Control of Your Self-Care.

So essentially take your most important goal(s) from Step 3 and add your why:

• “I will devote thirty minutes of my time to reading supplementary marketing material so I can increase profits by ___% this month for my business.”
• “I will devote __ hours each week for self care which includes exercising, journaling, etc.”

Once you have identified how you want to change your desired behaviors, plug them into your planner. You can adjust from here to find your ideal work-life balance. This is different for everybody. Some take great comfort in a fifty-hour work week, others want to spend a majority of their time at home with family.

5. Set Up Systems to Rinse & Repeat for Greatness

The same podcast I mentioned above (the goal digger podcast) featured Marie Wold (who as far as I’m concerned is killing it in life). Marie used to competitively body build, but now focuses on flexible dieting and serving as a resource for people who are interested in becoming healthier. While you may assume she is a little older since she has quite a bit figured out – she’s actually only twenty-three. She spoke about a plethora of topics, but one of my favorite parts of this Podcast episode was when she discussed something that seems to be intuitive – systems. While we may not realize it we all have a set of systems that we live with each day. But are your systems working to propel you towards success?

Eventually our motivation (as  I discussed in an earlier segment of the post) may wane. But setting up systems to help us achieve our goals are exceptionally important.

This may be as simple as:

• Putting together your gym bag the night before.
• Making a trip to the grocery store for healthy snacks/dinner components.
• Going to bed on time to have more control over your health and time in the morning.

These are all simple exercises that if you continue to do consistently will eventually make an impact. I put together a list of nightly tasks to accomplish for the next day and it has helped a lot!

6. Manage ALL Of Your Time Efficiently

This is the real world, and sometimes your ideal schedule will get thrown out of whack. A family member may unexpectedly come into town. You may get called in early to work. Etc.

But as long as you’re trying, you get personal points. Basically, (while giving yourself breaks within reason), pay attention to your time management. Could you be using your new time allotted more successfully? I find that using the Pomodoro Time System is very effective for me. This eliminates distractions and improves speed regarding the tasks I’m completing.

You will also get faster at things as you practice more. I have cut the time I spend at the gym on abs and legs in half by just being consistent about going.

Better yet, when you have a situation that pulls your attention or changes your plan, re-vamp and re-load for later during the day or week. It is not the end of the world. I actually break my rules and boundaries in a measured way each week and planning to do so helps me be a human. For instance, I love spending time with my family. They are up later than I am, so once a week I intentionally break my rule to be in bed at 9 PM on weekdays.

Also, as I mentioned you do need to manage all of your time. So give yourself an opportunity to rest – do not overlook the importance of sharpening your saw. If not you cannot create a sustainable balance. I take Sunday as a day of rest to feed my soul and have found it’s incredibly important. So I literally schedule a rest day, and that works for me.

My Ideal Work-Life Balance

How do I manage my time? Well just in case anyone was wondering, below is what an ideal schedule would look like for me.

Daily

• 30 minutes self-improvement (I focus on literature focused on social media, marketing, etc. by reading for half an hour, or listening to a valuable podcast, etc.)
• 8 hours working (at home and in-store)
• 3  hours blogging (actually writing, managing social media, etc.) (before work)
• 30 minutes – 2 hours at the gym (four-five days a week)
• Boundary – After 5 PM I spend my time at home with my husband (in combination with the gym).
• Boundary – After 9 PM I’m asleep to rise the next day early.

Weekly

Of  my two days off I spend

• Half of one of the days taking care of necessary house-work, laundry, etc.
• One full day at rest (only doing things that bring me joy, light house-work, actually resting for the week ahead).

This work-life balance won’t work for everybody, but it works for me. It is tight-knit and requires discipline but is much better than devoting all of my waking hours to blogging and occasionally checking in on my husband like he’s a plant.

I have taken a step back for about a month from my ideal schedule due to sickness, needing a break and having priorities shift up in regards to my overall health. But in a perfect world, this is the schedule I would keep.

My goals and priorities may be different than yours. I’ve been training to run a 5k and have a fledgling business. My husband is also training for his PT test for the Marine Corps, so our schedule may be more focused on fitness than others.

How do you manage your work-life balance?

Thanks for reading!

Lauren