By Ashley Preen

August 5, 2015

Four tips to fix your work/life balance

Some small business owners are workaholics who just love to spend every waking hour running their business.

But most people like to have a clear divide between their work life and their personal life. However, running a small business – any business, for that matter – is hard work. It often requires long and irregular hours, which makes maintaining a good work/life balance tricky.

Here are a few pointers on improving your work/life balance.

Get a hobby

To improve your work/life balance you need to really want to do it.

That means giving yourself a reason to want to stop working for the day and go home.

So find a hobby. Find something that really excites you and makes you want to occasionally leave the office early.

How about learning to play the guitar? Or what about taking up tennis? You’re probably passionate about running your business, so find something that makes you passionate about the rest of your life.

Get your employees to have more fun

If you’re finding a good work/life balance elusive, there’s a good chance your employees are having trouble to.

Having an office full of misery will do nothing to maximise productivity, so think about ways to break up a hardworking week with moments of fun.

Encourage your employees to have their own hobbies, and maybe give them the odd afternoon off to pursue them.

And how about a hobby for the whole group? Why don’t you all go cycling or play football once a month?

Do you really need to send an email?

You own a small business, not a global corporation. You know the names of every employee, and you’re within short walking distance of them all.

So do you really need to waste time sending an email only for the recipient to waste time reading it when you could quickly tell them whatever you have to say in person?

Too much email is one of the biggest problems faced by businesses of all sizes in the modern world. Sending and reading emails is boring and time-consuming and takes focus from actually being productive.

Work closer to home (or from home)

One of the biggest reasons why you might not have the greatest of work/life balances is that it takes you too long to get to work. And using the Tube at rush hour isn’t exactly fun either.

You might not want to uproot your family to move to a house closer to your business, but there is an alternative: flexible working.

Flexible working is becoming more common all the time, but when people talk about it it’s usually in reference to employees.

But just because you own the small business it doesn’t mean you can’t occasionally work from home if what you’re doing doesn’t require you to actually be in the office.

Getting rid of the commute could save you hours each day, hours which could be used to partake in your new hobbies (see our first tip again).