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Achieving work-life balance can often seem like an elusive concept for working parents. When you’re running around meeting work deadlines, doing laundry, and ensuring everyone in the family is well-fed, it can feel like you’re always a few steps behind at the office or failing to be there for your family. Self-care becomes a luxury that’s forever out of reach. This feeling that there’s never enough time to “do it all” has become so common that researchers even have a name for it: time poverty. And it’s plaguing working parents across the country, with 60% of Americans saying they sometimes feel “too busy to enjoy life.”
That was me. After going through the typical phases of trying to be “supermom,” then suffering from mom guilt, and stretching myself too thin, I finally found the answer on how to achieve work-life balance. I utilized my skills as a former CEO to hire help, delegate tasks, and create systems to keep everything running smoothly in our household. The result? I get to spend quality time with my kids, be fully present with my partner, start a new company, and still have time to recharge. Below, I go through the steps I took so you too can solve the mystery on how to achieve work-life balance.
Skip Ahead: How To Achieve Work-Life Balance
How To Achieve Work-Life Balance: Define Your Goals
You wouldn’t run a business without a goal in mind, so your life shouldn’t be any different. Work-life balance will look different for everyone, so it’s important to figure out what that means to you so you know what you’re working towards.
Pharma CEO, mom, and time-saving expert Hitha Palepu says each year she identifies her three main priorities and makes decisions with those in mind. For example, this year she chose her health, her family, and a specific milestone related to her pharmaceutical company,
“This is not the year I'm gonna be the best friend. This is not the year I'm going to kill it at [social media] content,” she says. “I think having very, very clear priorities, and running everything through that filter is key.”
I took a slightly different approach and started by defining what being a good parent means to me. Here’s what I wrote down:
- Keep kids safe (emotionally, psychologically, physically)
- Teach/educate them to prepare them for life
- Spend quality time with the kids and enjoy it
This led me to identify my overall goal as quality time: I want to enjoy time with the kids and my partner as often as possible. I want to feel present in those moments and not resentful or exhausted. This means when I make decisions about running the household, I do so with my goal of quality time in mind.
I recommend defining what being a good parent means to you – or what areas of your life you want to prioritize – and then working towards making that happen without feeling bad, guilty, or shameful if someone else does things differently.
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How To Achieve Work-Life Balance: Learn To Delegate
Delegation is the most effective way to scale up in any business — including managing your own home.
“We are adept at delegating at work, yet when it comes to the equally complex landscape of life, we’re left to navigate it alone,” writes Leslie Bateman, the head of Business Development at DuckBill AI (one of our favorite virtual family assistants).“Those comfortable at work need to understand that they have permission to delegate at home, too.”
I couldn’t agree more. Delegation buys you time, and you can spend that time in ways that align with the goal(s) you’ve set for yourself. In her book, Doing It All: Stop Overfunctioning and Become the Mom and Person You’re Meant to Be, Dr. Whitney Casares refers to household tasks that can be delegated as “the swappables.”
“These are the things that have to get done, but that don’t necessarily have to get done by you,” she writes. “The Solution [is to] delegate these tasks to someone or something else. They can be handed off to your partner, your kids (if they’re old enough), others in your parenting village (friends or family members), professionals, or even technology (e.g. auto bill pay).”
For many working parents, delegating at home will require a shift in mindset. Traditionally as parents, I think we tend to perform household tasks based on three things:
- Duty / Obligation / Shoulds (because it’s always been done this way)
- Capability
- Availability
Instead, I like to decide whether or not to perform a task myself or to delegate it based on these three things:
- Joy: Does this task bring me joy? How much dread and mental headspace does just thinking about doing this task take up?
- Energy/Time: Does it deplete my energy, leaving me unable to show up fully present and full of energy for the things I’m actually excited about? What’s the opportunity cost of my time? For example, if I spend time doing this task what will I be giving up?
- Expertise: Am I the best person for the job? Is there someone who can do it just as well as I can, or perhaps better and more efficiently?
To help you further embrace delegation, we’ve created a ton of resources that will help you find your joy, delegation style, and what to delegate. I recommend reading them in the order I have listed below…
- Define Your Joy
- Define Your Dread
- Calculate the Value of Your Time
- Identify Your Delegation Style
- Talk to Your Partner
- Hire Help (Subscribe to Proxy to get personalized recommendations and discounted rates on parenting resources that have been personally vetted by myself or a member of our team.)
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How To Achieve Work-Life Balance: Build Your Team
Once you’ve determined what types of tasks you’d like to delegate you can build your support team with that in mind. Work-life balance is virtually impossible without support. Have you ever heard of a successful business owner who didn't have employees? Of course not. Because a business does not succeed without support, and the same can be said about parenthood. We need a support system and team to achieve work-life balance. There’s a reason the proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” still rings true today. But a current lack of support for parents is one of the reasons why the Surgeon General issued a warning on how stressed out parents are in the U.S.
“While some parents can access resources, including the support of a committed co-parent, extended family, and friends who share in the responsibility of raising children, many parents are managing all these challenges largely on their own,” reads the report.
When it comes to support, childcare is usually what comes to mind, but there are so many specialists and experts who can provide tremendous support to your household. Here are some of our favorite professionals to help achieve work-life balance while raising children…
- Nanny
- Newborn Care Experts
- Staffing Agency
- Virtual Family Assistant
- Housekeeper
- House Manager
- Personal Chef
- Travel Agent
- Travel Nanny
There are also a lot of apps and other services that are less expensive and can often be paid for on an as-needed basis. Here are a few of our favorites…
- Mobile Beauty & Wellness Services
- Laundry Service, like Poplin
- Send or Return a Package
- Grocery Shopping
- Meal Prep, Meal Kit, & Prepared Meal Delivery
- Restocking Household Basics
You can also help make these support services available to more parents by advocating for your company to provide things like childcare or virtual assistants as a corporate benefit. (We even wrote a guide on How To Add A Virtual Assistant To Your Company Benefits Program). And on a national level, groups like the Chamber of Mothers and Moms First are pushing for larger public policy changes, including paid leave for all and more affordable childcare.
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How To Achieve Work-Life Balance: Get Organized
Delegating and utilizing a team at home requires communication processes and organizational tools similar to what you use at work. You will need shared calendars, a task management tool, and regular meetings. And you’ll want to treat those meetings with the same focus and commitment as you would a business meeting.
For example, if you are going to sit down weekly to plan your week with your partner (which I highly recommend!), stick to the time you’ve agreed on. Don't cancel it when you are feeling overwhelmed, and don't let your partner beg out of it either. If there's a conflict, then reschedule it when you are both available. Check out my post on How To Plan Your Week With Your Partner, for all my tips.
In addition to the weekly meeting with my partner, we meet with our team every Monday, which includes our two nannies who we treat and pay as family assistants. During the meeting, we review the household calendar, discuss any task assignments, and talk about the kids, including any milestones or observations about their behavior. Just like in business, we want to start the week with everyone on the same page, and ensure that everyone is empowered to do their job well.
There are also task management tools we use to communicate and stay organized in-between meetings. There are so many great options out there — here are the ones we recommend:
- Shared Google Calendar
- Trello: A free project management tool that's easy to use and helps prioritize your household to-do list. I’ve created Trello templates you can use to track home maintenance and task management.
- Maple: An organizational app for families that helps keep track of chores, meal planning, and so much more. It also has a built-in calendar. (Proxy subscribers automatically get access to the premium app for 90 days.)
- emeals: An app dedicated entirely to helping you with meal planning and grocery shopping. (Proxy subscribers get 40% off.)
How To Achieve Work-Life Balance: Become a Peacock Parent
Achieving work-life balance requires a shift in mindset. But we are here to help. We offer a ton of free guidance through our blog posts, social media, parenting guides, and templates.
Ready to invest in help at home without breaking the bank? We have just launched Proxy, a subscription service that gives you access to preferred pricing on time-saving services and professionals that we’ve personally vetted.
