Many business owners use the New Year season to take stock of their business and life in general. It is a great opportunity to set goals and plan for the coming year, and make changes where necessary.
Hopefully when you started your business, you went into it with your eyes wide open. If you didn’t, it would not have taken you long to learn that running a business means you will need to sacrifice some blood, sweat, tears, money, time and so on in order to achieve success. The tricky part is maintaining some semblance of balance. You need to ensure that your sacrifices are not outweighing your success.
The very first ‘sacrifice’ you should evaluate is family time. There is nothing wrong with short periods of time where work has to come first. But if you spend little time with family and friends and spend most of your nights and weekends working, you need to make some changes. Reflect on what is most important in life and work towards creating more, not less, time on that.
Find a leisure activity that is completely different to your ‘work’ and make it a regular (i.e. at least weekly) pastime. This gives your brain time to recharge and will ultimately provide you with more focus and energy. Ensure that you take regular holidays, where you completely ‘switch off’. This is critical now more than ever in the age of 24/7 access to technology.
Evaluate whether your ‘normal’ state is one of stress and anxiety. If it is, you need to decide if a shorter life span (which is ultimately what extreme, constant stress results in), is worth it.
Michelle Grice writes a weekly column for business women in The Western Weekender
