16 things keeping SME owners awake - 9. I’m worried about work/life balance.
Work/life balance sounds like a cliché spouted by those who don’t have all the responsibilities you do, but the reality is, you absolutely need to think about improving this if you haven’t already. The rate of marriage failures in SME owners lives is shockingly high because always working becomes a hard habit to break and no-one signed up to be alone and bring up a family by themselves.
The first thing to think about is setting some boundaries between work time and home time. Actually, it doesn’t necessarily look like work/home balance. For those without families, it can be between work and not work. That could be golf, going to the movies, exercise or whatever other passion you have in life. This doesn’t mean turning your phone off at 5.30pm until 7am the next morning. That’s unrealistic and there will always be exceptions when you are compelled to be doing work stuff in your down-time. What is important is that you set the boundaries so when you do work stuff in down-time, you recognise that it is an exception, not the rule. This takes practise and discipline.
This may not be you, but it is many. You finally switch off from work and all you can do is collapse in a heap on the couch. That’s a legitimate thing to do sometimes, but much better for your mental and physical health is to do something stimulating and pleasurable. Sport, writing, reading, dinner out with friends, going to a play or a comedy show. All things that take you out of your rut and reprogramme your mind and make you more match fit for the next day back in the trenches.
Most SME owners struggle with delegation. Sometimes it’s because you think that no-one else can do it as well as you can and sometimes it’s because you’re afraid that they will do it better than you. Either way, I’m recommending you explore what delegation can look like. Start slow. Find something that you always do yourself that actually isn’t mission critical and give it to someone else to do. Make sure you set them up for success by training them properly. You might find that you can let go of many things that others can do just as well and then you can focus your energy on things that actually make a difference.
Some people are really good at planning and scheduling their time, but most aren’t so good. What this commonly leads to is unfocused activity. You may have a bit of a plan for what you want to get done today in the back of your mind, but ten hours later you’re just finishing dealing with the twenty things that came up during the day that you didn’t anticipate. In conjunction with exercising your new delegation skills, you can use making and keeping to a plan drive you to be a far more effective leader.
Something that usually happens when you start trying to plan and organise your time is that you become overly ambitious. You look at your calendar and populate it with things to do. Your day is now segmented into blocks of time, each focused on something you need to get done and sometimes you may even have blocked a break or two.
The problem here is that you have not allowed enough time for each activity and as soon as you don’t hit the first mark, everything after that becomes unrealistic. I suggest that when you start planning your day, you leave twice the time you think you’ll need. If you finish early you’ll have a great sense of satisfaction and can bring forward the next thing. Stick with it and before long you’ll be able to schedule your day with some degree of certainty and be a whole lot more productive.
Technology is never the whole answer to every problem. But, if there are things that could be automated and taken care of by tech, seriously consider it. A shift from analogue to tech can be a steep mountain to climb but it is short term pain for long term gain. The best example I can think of is Xero. When you first start using it, you have to individually code every transaction which probably takes longer than whatever you’re doing now. But it very quickly learns and then your bank feeds directly into Xero and most transactions code themselves. I’m not trying to sell Xero here, just using it as an example of how tech can be your friend.
Most SME owners love to be involved in whatever is going on. That is always your right, but it comes at a significant cost. My recommendation is that you think strategically about the big pieces of work in your business and focus your attention on them. Sure, act as mentor and wise counsel for everything else, but resist the urge to be in the middle, or worse still – gatekeeper.
They say a rest is as good as a holiday. I’m not entirely convinced that’s true but there is a grain of truth in it. It may not suit you to have an hour for lunch every day, but every couple of hours, if you get up from your desk and go for a walk around the building or go out and get coffee, you’ll find that you sit down again with more energy and focus. A few minutes here and there are worth far more than if you just guts it out relentlessly.
Back to your friends and family for a moment. Talk to them about what your work commitments are and when you are committing time to be with them. Take this seriously because every time you promise to be there and don’t show, your credibility as a person of honour is getting eroded. They will not see your absence as a heroic dedication to “important” business matters. They’ll see it as a direct reflection of how unimportant they are.
Having just said that technology can be your best friend, it can also be your worst nightmare because it is omni-present. In my own life, I had to work hard to stop having my phone on at dinner time. What if something important is happening, by phone call, text or email? Guess what. The people on the other side of the table from you are at least as important as anything else in your life and don’t kid yourself that you’re so indispensable that an hour of not being connected will have awful consequences. The consequence might even be that the world sails on oblivious to your being off the grid.
One more thing about how to look at work/life balance. If you’re a family person, you absolutely need to dedicate focused time on just being with them. But you also exist as a sovereign human being with your own needs and interests that don’t necessarily align completely with the family. It isn’t wrong or selfish to claim some time for yourself. In a young family situation my suggestion is that you couple this with providing the same opportunity for solitude for your partner.
People are peculiar. Some more than others. I find it really easy to criticise myself for the things I haven’t done as well or as quickly as I want. I find it really hard to recognise and celebrate the things I’ve done well. In my own twisted way, I just bank the successes as just doing what I am expected to do. The failures provide a rich source of self-doubt and disempowerment. Next time something goes better than expected, celebrate it and make sure you share the celebration and acknowledgement with those around you because it will seldom just be your own triumph.
If at any stage you would like to reach out and talk in more detail about any or all these issues, or even ones that aren’t mentioned, please call me on +64 275 665 682, email me at john.luxton@regenerationhq.co.nz or book a time to talk, either face to face or by Zoom. Any call will be free, confidential and with no obligation to do anything else.