How to Have a Personal Life as an Entrepreneur

Balancing your professional and personal life is difficult even for people who work a set number of hours in their jobs. It becomes even more difficult when you do not have set hours, and you are not exactly answerable to anyone, but yourself.

Being an entrepreneur has an added thought process of working continuously. If you aren’t working, you start feeling guilty and feel as if you aren’t doing enough. The responsibilities and obligations you feel overfills your plate. True, being an entrepreneur means putting more time towards your goal, sacrificing some personal time, but knowing how much to sacrifice is very important.

Creating balance in your life is something that you need to work towards. A balance makes you feel more fulfilled and also helps meet all the obligations. By having no personal life, and trying to work 24×7, you are doing more harm than good.

Being your own boss means that you get to decide your own schedule. You have to be disciplined enough to take some time out for yourself. Use this time to meet people, do things you love, learn things you have wanted to, spend time with your family. The time you take out for yourself helps you to recharge your mind, which in turn will help you to work better towards your goal.

As an entrepreneur, you already know the importance of planning and organization. You have to be thorough to get the most out of your day. This is a challenge if you work from home. Because there is no separation between your workspace and your living space, it is easy for one to bleed into another, and mostly it will be the work taking over everything.

“The question I ask myself almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’”

– Mark Zuckerberg

The first step is to respect the work and private life for yourself. When you yourself value your time, others will have to follow. If you live alone, then distractions are limited and easy to deal with, but when you live with family, it becomes complicated. Because you are home, they might think you are available for whatever reason.

You have to set clear rules and a timeline when no one is allowed to disturb you or ask you to do something. This also gives you a chance to feel like you actually have separate work and personal lives. When you set a time when your family cannot disturb you, they themselves will make sure that you get off work when that time is over.

When a cycle sets in, keep family out during work will make the family bring you in during your allotted personal time. When you do not do this and entertain everyone all the time, it is difficult for anyone to know when work stops and when personal time starts.

Now that you know how to keep yourself busy in an effective manner, you need to work on finding the time you are most productive. You have the flexibility to work according to yourself, use that to your advantage.

I know people who work the best at nights or early mornings, but they don’t have the flexibility to do that because they work a job where they have to fill in the hours that the company demands. You, on the other hand, don’t. So, work your schedule around your personal life to not feel pressured to fit in everything at the same time.

If you have a spouse who has a job, then you can sync your time to them so that your free time syncs in as well. If you have children and you know they will be home in the afternoons, then you can work all morning to spend time with them later.

It really is all about finding out what works best for you. You also have to take care of the business side of things as well, of course. If your work requires you to communicate with clients and the timeline you want to work at doesn’t match, then set a few hours aside to later talk to your clients. You do not have to do all the work all at once, find the rhythm that makes the most sense to your situation.

When you are working on a timeline that is different from others, you might have to say ‘no’ more frequently, don’t be afraid of it. It just means you value your time enough to say no.

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

– Albert Schweitzer

When you work in an office, you get a change of scene when you come home. Change in the environment helps to deal with lows if there are any. Highs and lows are part of life and also business. With a job, you can leave it at the door when you enter your home. What do you do when your home is your office?

Like it is advised to leave your work at the door, you have to do the same. Leave your work on your laptop as soon as you shut it. You stopped working, that means you need to leave all the work there. I know, it is easier said than done. But, you need to remember that low points don’t last forever like high points don’t, so, instead of stressing, take some time out. Spend this time with people who matter or doing what you love so that your brain gets a break from thinking about business and has a chance to recharge itself.

“You have to see failure as the beginning and the middle, but never entertain it as an end.”

-Jessica Herrin

Hitting lows means maybe you can’t afford to take time out for yourself. But, here’s where you can do what I do at times like these. When things get too difficult, try merging your breaks and family time. I usually follow the Pomodoro technique, where you work in 25-minute blocks and take breaks, but if things get too hectic or there are some crises, what I do is I reschedule my timeline.

I take a longer break and incorporate a small activity with my family. Let’s say I take 2 hours off when things get too heavy, and my mind desperately needs a break, and watch a movie with my family at that time. This gives me a break, lets me spend time with my family, and also lets me loosen up a bit. I can then get back to work with my mind a little more freed up than it was before.

This works because it lets your brain think that you aren’t taking a break, you are still doing something valuable. You are spending time with your family, which we can otherwise neglect when work gets heavy. When there’s a lot to do, taking breaks can make you guilty, and your mind will keep going back to what you could do in the time you are taking off, may it be just 5-minutes.

Following my method, tricks your mind into not feeling guilty about taking the much-needed break and also helps you pay attention to the people who matter. It is like killing two birds with a stone.

Final Takeaway

You will come across a lot of tips to balance your life online. But remember to not follow everything you read. Something that works for someone else might not work for you, and something that works for you might make no sense to someone else.

In the beginning, I made the mistake of following every advice I came across. I quickly realized that every person is different, every business is different. Our priorities are different, and what we value in life is totally different from someone from even our closest circle.

So, when we talk about having balance in life, it doesn’t always mean family and work, it can also mean you and work. Find out what balance means to you, and work on achieving it.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

-Mark Twain