Tips to Find Your Work-Life Balance

A lot of people are talking about work/life balance—it’s a subject that is not going away. The obvious conclusion is that many of us believe we are out of balance.

Leaders worry about balance, too. Even though they are “in charge,” most of the leaders I talk with express serious questions about the impact of their work on their families and their own health.

It’s vitally important to me to maintain a healthy balance. While I am not perfect, I have invested time, effort, and money to intentionally develop habits of balance over the last twenty years, and the results have been worth it.

In this post, I’m sharing the most valuable lessons I have learned from other leaders. Each one of these is an actual practice that I have used or still use in my life today. But before we jump to the tips, let’s talk about what we really mean by balance.

What do we really mean by balance?

If work and life seem out of balance, it’s probably not because we are enjoying life too much. Instead, it feels like the work side is too heavy or too demanding, and the life side is not robust enough.

It’s almost as if we think of work as a bully and ourselves as a victim. Work and its demands are pushing us around and stopping us from enjoying a fulfilling life.

Perhaps it would help if we spoke about this issue more honestly and said, “I am responsible to place reasonable limits on work and to deliberately invest time and energy into other things that bring life.”

If you are honest, the first step to achieving work/life balance is to take responsibility for the fact that you are out of balance and recognize how your own choices and tolerations have contributed to the lack of balance. From there, you can identify which of the practices below might help you achieve greater balance.

The 14 Practices

Each of these practices is something I learned from another leader and have actually used with good results.

1. Take a broader inventory of your life that goes beyond the dualistic view of work vs. life. Consider the four-part view: work, rest, play, and worship. Or use an inventory that includes family, community, service, physical fitness, emotional health, etc. (Dr. Dale Ackley)
2. Identify your “center of gravity” and the commitments that sustain it. Your center of gravity is the weightiest priority that you will not allow to be minimized. My center of gravity is family & faith, and I create balance by building the rest of my life around those two. (Mike Shero)
3. Schedule your balance in first by writing all your important, non-work events on the calendar a month ahead of time, and then schedule work activities, trips, etc. afterward. (Jack Martin)
4. Recognize that balance is dynamic, meaning that it changes, and we must keep moving to stay in balance. External events and pressures push us out of balance all the time. Making adjustments and corrections is not failure, it’s normal. When you fall, get up and regain your balance. (Michael Hyatt)
5. Stop working for 24 hours each week. For me, this means no email, no work texts, no work calls, and no laptop. Periodically, put physical distance between you and work by getting away completely. (Jesus)
6. Create specific boundaries around work and communicate them to coworkers. Be willing to say “No” to any request that would transgress those boundaries, even if it might disappoint others. (Drs. Henry Cloud & John Townsend)
7. Quit things. If you are seriously out of balance and headed for a crisis, then aggressively cut back on non-essential activities and get out of recurring commitments. During a difficult season of life, a counselor told me to “be brutal” with my schedule to create margin immediately. One leader and friend says that he quits something every Thursday. (Bob Goff)
8. Build your business (or choose your work) to create the kind of life that is important to you. It helps to have a job where you have flexibility in your schedule. But if you feel like you don’t have control (a victim mentality?), then ask yourself what is in the way of your exercising greater control. Whatever is in the way is something that you currently value more than balance. (Chris Kenney)
9. Take off the cape. You are not Superman, and you can’t meet every need, rescue every project, or save every employee. A wise couple told me of a sticky note they put on the bathroom mirror that says, “There is a Savior, and I’m not him.” (Larry & Barb Magnuson)
10. Tune in to outside indicators. A good friend will notice when you are out of balance and will tell you. Sometimes hearing it from an external source is enough motivation to make a change. (Vince Vigil)
11. Quit when it’s time to quit, even if you’re not done. It will all still be there tomorrow. There are very few tasks that are so essential that you must work in the evening or on weekends. When you put a firm time limit on work, you create greater urgency and efficiency during normal working hours. (Ron Holland)
12. Go to bed on time. Ancient cultures counted a new day as starting at sundown. I’ve learned that one secret to having a great day of balance is to start with a full night’s sleep. (Mom)
13. Schedule appointments in your week from the middle. Start with Wednesday and work your way outward. This allows you to control the start and end of your week, whether you want to use that time for planning or plowing through work. When external appointments are driving your schedule, it’s easy to get out of balance. (Michael Port)
14. Be content with what you have by actively enjoying the good and reminding yourself of it. I have discovered that I feel more balanced when I make time to remember recent events and experiences I enjoyed. I might be grousing about how much work I have to do, but then I remember a recent date with my wife, a great workout, a lunch with my daughter—and it lifts me out of a funk of feeling imbalanced. (Solomon)

I have more to learn about balance, so please comment with lessons or practices you have found to create a healthier balance in life.

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