How to Establish a Work Life Balance as an Online Entrepreneur
Bing! Bing! Bing! – that’s your phone, computer, and smart watch notifying you all at once of a client trying to contact you, but it’s 9:00 pm and you just sat down on your couch, next to your fur baby, with a glass of wine to watch your favourite tv show after working a 12 hour day. Doesn’t the thought of this already heighten your stress levels?
We can all relate to that feeling of ‘UGH, WHAT NOW?!’ Of course you’re not mad at the specific client but it’s valid to be annoyed by the situation.
What if we told you this could have been prevented?
What if we told you that you don’t have to start drafting a response to your client at 9:00 pm with a glass of wine in your hands?
What if we told you that, despite popular belief, we can in fact take time for ourselves and your business will actually thank you in the end?
Turning your phone off (or at least work notifications) and taking social media breaks have real benefits! Turning off notifications will allow you to reclaim YOUR time and make you more intentional about how you spend it. You will also regain your focus by having uninterrupted time to complete tasks more efficiently. Most importantly, turning off notifications will also most importantly prevent burnout.
In America, workplace stress is responsible for up to $190 Billion in the U.S. Healthcare Costs. In Canada, 1 in 4 workers reported being highly stressed. One in five Canadians experience a mental health problem or illness each year, equating to 500,000 employees unable to work every week due to mental health problems or illnesses.
Studies show that being connected to email and messaging apps after hours for work can increase not only your anxiety, but your partner’s (if you have one) anxiety. Being connected and having your notifications turned on or checking your phone frequently for work related messages can get in the way of our most precious relationships.
Chronic stress and fatigue are also detrimental side effects of the ‘always-on’ culture and lead to emotional fatigue. The detrimental mental health effects cause employees to have poor job performance.
What are the Benefits to Disconnecting and Establishing a Work Life Balance?
- You will actually be more productive
- Improve Mental Health
- Improve the quality time with your loved ones
SO WHAT ARE BIG COMPANIES DOING ABOUT THIS?
In 2012, Volkswagen blocked all after-hour emails sent to employees on their Blackberries in an effort to prevent burnout and overworking.
In 2016, France banned companies with over fifty employees from emailing their employees after hours or while on vacation in an effort to protect employees’ ‘right to disconnect’. France’s new law is a great reminder that being a ‘work-a-holic’ is neither necessary nor healthy for you, and that taking time for yourself is necessary! Bring back some of your joie de vivre! Remember – you’re your own boss and can make your own rules!
Here are our top three favourite boundaries to put in place:
OFFICE HOURS
We know you love your business and that you are probably a work-a-holic! – But as you increase the number of clients you service, you need to set firm boundaries before your life becomes overrun by your friendly “contact me anytime” motto.
In Client-Coaching Agreements, we strongly encourage you to set office hours to set boundaries for your business and personal life. This notifies your clients when to expect your reply. For example, Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm, excluding weekends and national holidays.
This lets you have a life on weekdays and the weekends. Going to a cottage this weekend and planning going ‘off the grid’? Not a problem! If you decide to reply to a client at 6pm on a Tuesday, that’s okay too!
Think of office hours as your rule book which sets the expectation for you and the client that you may not be able to respond to inquiries immediately. Having these hours in place also creates boundaries for yourself. Mentally you know that after 5pm, you’re off the clock and this is when you can shut your computer down for the day – if you want to!
In Client-Coaching Agreements, we also strongly recommend outlining an expected response time from the coach. Even though we know you are committed to your clients, sometimes life unexpectedly gets in the way – for example, you fall ill, you get hurt, you have a family emergency, you need a mid-week staycation to refresh your mindset – the possibilities are endless.
We encourage you to set realistic expectations. We don’t want the ‘Karens’ of the world to be upset if you take a bit longer to reply. Depending on your business, we recommend allowing yourself upwards of 48 hours to reply.
VISIT OUR COACHING AGREEMENTS TO SET UP YOUR OFFICE HOURS
APPS
With the online landscape, sometimes it may feel impossible to separate your personal life from your online business. You can have your friends, family, and clients all texting and calling you at once if you don’t set boundaries. It will feel especially overwhelming if you allow all these people to contact you in the same manner – all using WhatsApp, your personal email, and Facetime. That’s why we recommend separating your personal and business life through the use of apps.
Nowadays, it’s common to have family and friend group chats using WhatsApp. Great, don’t change that! To avoid clients and other business relationships contacting you through WhatsApp, you can use a different app as your main form of contact!
Here are our favourites:
- Telegram: The Telegram is a cloud-based messenger app that allows you to send messages, photos, videos, and files. You are able to create small one-on-one group chats and/or group chats that include over 200,000 people! You are also able to create channels to broadcast information to an unlimited number of users. Telegram is all about speed and security. This app uses end-to-end encryption for voice and video calls, keeping your private information actually private! The best part? You can connect and use this app on all your devices for FREE!
- Voxer: The Voxer is the ‘Walkie Talkie’ of messaging apps. Voxer is free for the most basic ‘Personal’ account where you can live and record voice messages and send texts, photos, and videos. You can communicate one-on-one with clients and/or choose to have large group chats up to 500 people. This app is also very secure as it uses end-to-end encryption to ensure privacy for all parties!
- Marco Polo: Marco Polo is the ‘asynchronous facetime’ of the messaging apps. Marco Polo has free and monthly subscription options. Marco Polo is a face-to-face video communication app that allows you and your clients to send each other videos on their own time! Chats, group and saved videos remain free, while the paid subscriptions have the option to send photos, notes, video reactions and have bookmark, reminder and forwarding capabilities.
- Slack: Slack allows you to text, voice, and video call with your clients one-on-one and/or in group chats. You can have private and public chats, share files, and connect up to ten apps to Slack, such as Google Drive. Slack is one of the most popular apps for business communication that connects to your phone and desktop for efficiency. Slack also allows you to “sign-off”, mute notifications, and tell people the status of when you will be available next. Slack is suitable for businesses of any size! Fun fact: large corporations such as TD Ameritrade, BBC, and Trivago use Slack to communicate with their employees. Just like the other messenger apps, there are free and paid subscription options.
Using different apps for business versus leisure allows you to mentally separate the conversations!
We also recommend having two emails, one for business, and one for personal. This again allows you to separate the conversations and purposes.
If you use social media or a website as your main mode of marketing, we also recommend planning your social media and website posts as much as you can. Apps such as Later allow you to visually plan, schedule, and analyze your social media posts. Website builders like Wix also allow you to upload and schedule your posts for publication. Have a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday at 9am but promised your followers that a new blog or contest would be announced at the same time? No worries! These apps have you covered! Utilizing these apps will keep your life stress free and give you the ability to post when you want without looking at your phone or computer!
TURNING OFF NOTIFICATIONS
So, hopefully by now you’re convinced as to why you need to establish office hours and why you should use separate useful apps to compartmentalize your personal and business relationships! By using separate apps this allows you to turn off specific app notifications. You could, for example, leave WhatsApp notifications on as needed throughout the day, and only have Telegram notifications on from 9-5 Monday through Friday. You could also set your personal email account as your primary email so when you log into your computer your work email isn’t the first one to appear on your off time.
TIP: The app, Freedom, is also a popular app to help you control the amount of time you spend on websites, email and social media. The app Freedom allows you to block notifications and the use of apps and websites to allow you to regain focus. Don’t want to receive work notifications past 5pm Mondays – Fridays and on weekends? Amazing! Just turn on Freedom and the app will prevent you from refreshing the selected apps and receiving any notifications. Freedom is available on your devices and desktop, and is a great tool to help you regain work life balance.
Don’t Feel Guilty!
Don’t feel guilty about taking time for yourself. We are not super humans. By striving to be our best selves and taking time for self-care, your business will reflect that. Burnout impacts not only you but also your clients and business. So try these three tricks to try to prevent burnout and establish a work life balance.
Author Credits
Gillian Turvey is a final year law student in the UK and a 2021 EFV Legal Intern, She is specializing her studies towards Criminal and Family Law, and can be found playing with her puppy. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
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