5 Top Things to Help with a balanced Home and Work Life

Working from home has so many benefits! It enables you the freedom to work in your own personal space. To be close to your family and children at home. You avoid travel and transport costs, sitting in traffic, high costs of petrol. Yet in the role of a VA requires a very strong ability to prioritize and focus and there are many pressures in trying to find the work home balance within your home.

Create a home office space

First of all it is essential to have an office “space” or your own area where you can dedicate your time to your work with clarity and focus. This space should be organized and clean and make you feel like when you enter it, it is work time! Light and bright and full of fresh air. Put a sign on the door that establishes hours that you operate and keep the door open or closed appropriately. Don’t allow family members to wander into your office with stuff that may clutter your work area.

Use time management effectively

Then it is also essential to allocate your time effectively. If for example you work for a client for 3 hours a day, use Toggl or any similar application to monitor the time that you allocate to this client. Often as a VA you will have 3 or more jobs that you are responsible for and in order to make sure you allocate your time to each client each day, you need to be strict with this time management. The flexibility of working at home is fantastic in this way, as you can allocate your day as you wish. Similarly, you need to keep your household in order. Especially if you have young children, there needs to be set times for meals, breakfast, lunch, bed time etc. This way the family will get to know when it is your work time and not interfere with that.

Socialise online

The lack of social contact with other work colleagues can be difficult as a VA, but with systems like Slack where you can chat to other VA’s it is becoming much more interactive. It is important to utilize these chat rooms and liaise regarding methods of working, new systems, how you are feeling etc. Even just to vent!

Take a break!

Lunch breaks and tea breaks will help to keep the creative juices flowing! Breaks help you get your blood circulating and you will be more productive in the end.

Get moving

Finding time to get outdoors, and exercise every day is a great way to stay focused and keep energy levels on top form.

Self-discipline is key

Allocate your hours and stick to them….. and when you are finished then clock off for the day and switch off. You need to treat it as you would an office job, and “leave” at the end of the day otherwise you can end up working constantly and this just leads to burn out.

I definitely see this way of working as the way of the future, the way forward. I love my job and the work/family balance is incredibly fulfilling.