Stop Overworking With These Work-Life Balance Tips

Working women have reported that work-life imbalance is their number one stressor.

Why is this when a Google search yields millions of work-life balance tips and how-to's?

Perhaps it involves bigger issues:

• Prioritizing stress-relief activities and doing the things that matter most
• Establishing new time management strategies to create time for work-life balance
• Understanding barriers to taking downtime
• Changing an unhealthy habit of compulsively overworking
• Building new habits over time

Putting your business systems in maintenance mode will give you time off to work through these things. You’ll also need a mindset shift, good boundaries, a willingness to try new things, and a strategy for countering overwork tendencies.

If your comfort zone is running until you drop, you may use any free time for work, even if you intend to cultivate work-life balance.

Working hard builds our businesses. Working too much breaks them down because it breaks us down and leads to burnout.

With all this in mind, let's expand work-life balance tips to include a good strategy that translates into behaviors and habits.

Here's what we'll cover:

• “Maintenance mode"  + how it helps overcome resistance to having more time off
• Why working less can be so hard
• Shifting your mindset from "work" to "relax and replenish"
• Work-life balance and stress-relief activities to fill your time (instead of more work)

How to Have Better Work-Life Balance: A Strategic Approach

Overcoming Resistance to Working Less

“Maintenance mode” means you’re regularly maintaining, updating, and refining high-functioning business systems.

Once you’re routinely using regular check-ins to keep everything purring along in the background, you’ll have more free time to focus on work-life balance.

You’ll also be able to build your business more efficiently when you are working, so don’t worry about that.

Still, you may falter when you’re faced with an extra hour or two each day.

This is because online business owners, especially women entrepreneurs, are often tempted to use their extra time for more work or personal productivity tasks like house chores. However, if you intend to use the free time for work-life balance, using it to work more is a form of resistance.

Work-life balance means working less so you have time to do non-work related things. I encourage you to intentionally use that time for activities that replenish, inspire, and relieve stress. 

Why Working Less is Hard for Online Business Owners

Adopting work-life balance tips can be difficult for anyone. It's especially tough for online entrepreneurs because as long as you're close to a computer, you can be "at work." You also work in a highly competitive, 24/7 business environment. 

This pressure and access only compels us to work more, even if we don’t want to. But if we keep working more and more, it only leads to chronic stress, burnout, and lack of fulfillment. It will also negatively impact our businesses. 

The need for work-life balance is critical. But resistance can be intense. Let’s break down some root causes of resistance a little more so we can learn to recognize it when it arises.

Building Healthy Habits

Habit building is a skill you can learn and practice. It means you have to change. And change—even good change—feels unsettling. 

Resistance can feel unsettling and often masks itself as boredom, emptiness, or frustration. However, it signals an opportunity to build the skill of using downtime to replenish yourself.

Eventually, you’ll reset your comfort zone, and your new habits will feel normal and natural.

Your Nervous System

Your nervous system is stressed if you tend to live, work, or strive in an anxious, ramped-up state.

This physiological and emotional stress response results from your nervous system's inability to cycle through natural rhythms of alert and stasis. 

From hormones to digestion to mental clarity, undue demands on your body eventually lead to burnout and dysfunction.

When your nervous system is overactive or stressed, it’s unable to downshift to relaxation mode. It's that feeling of being unable to wind down or excuse yourself from work and “should-dos.”

Cultural Attitudes

When you intentionally decide to work less, you go against hustle culture. 

Status and recognition tend to attach themselves to working hard—not taking time off. Devoting time to easing stress and work-life balance is an inside job.

Guilt, Shame, and "Shoulds"

Guilt, shame, and shoulds are emotions that compel overwork. Taking time off to nourish yourself often provokes guilt, even if you intentionally carved out time for that purpose. 

There could be a strong belief that you (or people or adults) shouldn't waste time or work less.

Resolving limiting beliefs takes time and self-compassion. Try to recognize them as they arise and do something to reinforce new, healthy habits.

The Challenge of Self-Worth

• Do you struggle to relax, give yourself pleasure, or “treat” yourself? 
• Do you believe you're allowed to relieve stress?

These attitudes reflect a self-worth that needs a little TLC. 

You can work through this with affirmations, journaling, or taking an "opposite" action—doing what you won't permit yourself to do. 

From "Work More" to "Relax and Replenish"

Mindset shifts are always a process. They take time, and there are setbacks. 

For women entrepreneurs accustomed to always being "on," this is especially true. 

However, shifting your mindset from “work more” to “relax and replenish” is the mental change you need to create the work-life balance you crave.

Try an affirmation whenever you feel your mindset slipping back to work or productivity. 

• "I'm shifting to a work-life balance mindset."
• "I'm going to work less so I can live more."
• "More work-life balance will make me better at work."
• "I have some work-life balance tips to help me practice my mindset."

• “I have to take care of myself to take care of my business.”

Things to Do In Your Downtime (Instead of Working More)

To avoid falling back into old habits, prepare for the prospect of having more free time. 

First, get an idea of activities that resonate with you. Focus on the sweet spot where stress-relief meets the things you long to do.

Once you've got a few, jot them down and put them somewhere you'll see them regularly. Refer to them when unsure what to do during your downtime.

Here's some inspiration:

3 Types of Work-Life Balance Activities

Grounding

This is just about being a few beats more present in your body. Try a body check, a walk, or bodywork. It’s anything that brings you into your physical senses: what you see, hear, smell, etc. Go slow. Get into it. Take full breaths. 

Check Out the Stress Relief Toolkit

Connection

Connection activities are endless! It's that wine meetup or book club. A night of dancing. Popping into a new restaurant or gallery you've been wanting to visit. Quality time with a loved one. Calling a good friend and planning an outing. Volunteering. Making a memory.

The Little Things

These are the little things. They make life worth living and work worth doing. 

Think: sunset walks on the beach (if you're lucky enough to live near the ocean!). Immersing yourself in the sights and smells of slowly cooking a meal. Lighting ALL the candles. Painting a watercolor of Fall leaves. Jumping in your favorite lake. Treating yourself to an unscheduled afternoon. Daydreaming. Scrapbooking. Stargazing on a picnic blanket . . . 

The sky's the limit. 

What will you do with your newly found free time?

Work-Life Balance Tips For Online Business Owners

To achieve work-life balance, you need a solid strategy covering some essential areas. Get your business systems into maintenance mode to free up time. Develop an understanding of why you may be tempted to work “more” even when you don’t want to. 

Actively learn about and incorporate stress-relief practices and create habits that support them. 

It’s also helpful to plan ahead for how you’ll use your newly available time. Focus on ways to promote balance, such as dedicating it to restorative activities or personal pursuits. Finally, keep a list of activities that resonate with you ready to go so you can quickly transition to stress release when you have the time.

I’m passionate about offering tips and answers for how to have better work-life balance. Check out managing stress as a business owner.