8 Tips For Balancing Work and Family Responsibilities

October 12, 2011 by Lisa Stevens in Blog

Editor’s Note: We are excited to see a number of bloggers reach out to us to participate in contributing to our blog. Because of the consistency of requests I want to make Wednesdays special by featuring the work of other bloggers making a difference in helping us become better in our careers and professional lives. I am honored to share your work here.

Also Jimmy from My Life Architects posted an interview with me about blogging, go check it out. Without any further ado, Lisa has a wonderfully thoughtful and helpful post for us today. – Bryce

Achieving balance in our daily lives sometimes puts us in an overloaded state of mind. Balancing work and family life in just 24 hours seems next to impossible for many of us and stressful when we try to do everything by ourselves.

A good balance of responsibilities at work and home will enhance the quality of our lives and subsequently the lives of those around us. When that balance is out of whack, stress takes over and both work and family routines suffer.

1. Write down the events that you have in mind that you would like to do with your family.

2. Set a goal for when you would like to take the family on vacation and schedule your projects at work to allow you to take that time off.

3. Set certain week nights that you will be home for dinner, on time, and your full attention will be on the family and not what happened or didn’t get done at work.

4. Leave work at work and enjoy the family. Your work is very important and needs your attention, but your family needs just as much attention to complete your life.

5. Stop taking over other peoples responsibilities at work. Learn to say no, you can’t help right now because your project needs all your attention.

6. Learn to delegate assignments down to other people in your office so you can take care of the major issues that need your attention.

7. Don’t hang on to every little piece of a project when someone less busy could be doing the minor chores. Organize what only you can do and what someone under you can handle instead of you doing it all.

8. Don’t allow distractions to take over your day. Keep your thoughts on what is expected of you and avoid procrastination.

Balancing your routine of work and family life will enhance your relationships with everyone involved. You will gain time with the family and your employer will be grateful for you being well organized and on top of your responsibilities. Frustration and stress will be a thing of the past as you gain control over the balance between work and family fun.

What are your tips for a better work life balance?

image courtesy of left-hand

19 Responses to “8 Tips For Balancing Work and Family Responsibilities”

On October 12, 2011 at 8:11 am Tisa responded with... #

Balancing work and home is especially hard because I work from home. My family is very important to me, so when they’re not here I work. When they get home from work and school, I “leave” work and make sure to spend time with them.

Now I need to work on not checking my email and all that!

Thanks for a great post!

Tisa
Tisa recently posted..Optimize Your Time

Reply
- On October 12, 2011 at 2:48 pm Bryce Christiansen responded with... #
  
  Hi Tisa,
  
  Sounds like you have your priorities where they should be. Your kids will appreciate it and your family will be blessed.
  
  Thanks for the thoughts.
  
  Bryce
  
  Reply
On October 12, 2011 at 11:50 am Grady Pruitt responded with... #

Balancing work and family is challenging. I try to put family first as often as I can though. By putting the family first, I get to be there for the special events of my children.

Thanks for sharing!
Grady Pruitt recently posted..Why Should You Listen To Your Body?

Reply
- On October 12, 2011 at 2:50 pm Bryce Christiansen responded with... #
  
  Dito Grady. Great priorities and plans. Sometimes we don’t really see the rewards of this kind of sacrifice until the kids are grown and gone. My parents recently had the last of the kids move out and I’m sure they don’t regret any of the time they spent with us.
  
  Bryce
  
  Reply
On October 13, 2011 at 12:19 am Jimmy responded with... #

Thanks for all these great tips to balance our lives up. Personally, I find that doing an indepth weekly planning exercises to schedule in our bigger and more important events is useful. It helps us to judge our available free time for the week. Once you have all major components in, you know how much spare time you can cater for last minute requests. We do not want to be too aggressive at turning people away as well, especially if you are in business.

Another point that helped me a lot is to really switch off all attention for anything if you are doing one particular task at the moment. For example, when writing a post, I do not turn on my internet connection for fear of being distracted by incoming emails or a temptation to check.

BTW, I am starting a simple discussion on my latest post on personal development in school. Would sure like your take on this.

Cheers
Jimmy recently posted..Should a Personal Development Program be Taught in Schools?

Reply
- On October 13, 2011 at 7:51 am Bryce Christiansen responded with... #
  
  Great points Jimmy,
  
  It’s easy to get distracted when your work is online. There’s always an email to read, a tweet to follow up on, a comment to respond to. Our blogging world never comes to a halt. Thanks for the good example of how to deal with it.
  
  Thanks again for the interview Jimmy. Looking forward to sharing your post here as well.
  
  Bryce
  
  Reply
On October 13, 2011 at 12:08 pm Fred Tracy responded with... #

This is really a great article.

I have to emphasize 4. Leave work at work and enjoy the family.

I know I can be hard to leave work at work, but that is something we absolutely have to do. We can’t let foolishness in the workplace heard what really matters – our family and personal life.
Fred Tracy recently posted..How to Make Money from Doing Work You Love

Reply
- On October 13, 2011 at 3:54 pm Bryce Christiansen responded with... #
  
  Thanks for stopping by and commenting Fred. I know it’s something you have had to cut back on, so it means a lot that we are still one of your destinations to comment on.
  
  I’m with you on that point as well. It’s something that we often don’t correct until it’s too late. It can result in everything from hurt feelings by your kids and family to divorce.
  
  Better to keep it from ever happening.
  
  Thanks again,
  
  Bryce
  
  Reply
On October 13, 2011 at 5:42 pm MANICKAM VIJAYABANU responded with... #

Hi Lisa,

Wonderfully pointed the balance between work and family. I love most of your points and very practical.

I am looking point five differently. Let’s take the scenario from real world model. These days, team environment is inevitable and may happened to interact many people and team to get your process done.

In my previous project, We had a situation. Like, we need to receive a data feed from other source system and for some technical reason the feed didn’t reach at our scheduled job time. Ultimately our job got failed. When we back track the root cause, we addressed the issue happened due to the source system job failure.

Now, For our project management, What’s the next ETA and next scheduled re run? Situation entirely depends on source feed!. When en-quire at source team, they explain me the issue and I suggested few options from my Angle, Since I did come across the similar technology some time before. For our good, It worked. Finally we got a feed and could able to re schedule our job process.

I am just trying to point here, At work, The final mission should be important as common goal to every one. Every success and failure has interconnection and nothing is single centric at business. (Management decisions are different from this view)

I positively agree, we should not interfere with others tasks, rather always share your hands to help others when stumble a situation to move ahead to achieve your common goals. Even the task is not yours.

Help. Always. Thanks for the interesting article.
MANICKAM VIJAYABANU recently posted..MOG- A New Wave At Music For Free And On Demand

Reply
- On October 14, 2011 at 7:11 am Bryce Christiansen responded with... #
  
  Good point Manickam.
  
  It’s good to have an open mind to helping other teammates when it will help the whole team move forward.
  
  However, if you find yourself taking on other’s work often, there is a deeper problem. It’s not healthy for you or the company to have the additional stress of not just your work needs, but the other teammates’ as well.
  
  I like it, thanks.
  
  Bryce
  
  Reply
On October 13, 2011 at 7:48 pm Justin | Mazzastick responded with... #

I checked out your interview on Jimmy’s blog and I thought that you had some great responses there.

Life really is all about balance my friend. If the pendulum swings too much in either direction than we are in for a world of hurting.

Reply
- On October 14, 2011 at 7:12 am Bryce Christiansen responded with... #
  
  Thanks Justin,
  
  I appreciate that. You are one of the guys I look up to so it means a lot.
  
  You’re comment about balance pretty much sums it up. We got to keep the pendulum steady.
  
  Bryce
  Bryce Christiansen recently posted..Are You Grooming Others For Success? (And Why Avoiding It Can Cost You a Job)
  
  Reply
On October 17, 2011 at 12:47 am Adeline | Life and Leisure responded with... #

Thanks very much for sharing this, Lisa. I work from home so balancing work and family can be really challenging. When I first started working from home, it was really difficult. But like what you shared here, it’s all about setting your goals and scheduling things. Now, no matter how tempting it can be, I always make it a point to save my weekends for my family.
Adeline | Life and Leisure recently posted..A Newfound Appreciation for Foie Gras

Reply
On October 17, 2011 at 11:16 pm Harleena Singh responded with... #

I love the title of the post- as I can relate so well to it!

These are just some of the tips I need to follow myself, though have to work out a schedule for most of them. I had even written a post about why family time is important to remind myself about things I need to change!!

Somehow we get so caught up in the daily rut of life that balancing your work and family life, always does take a back seat. Need to work at making it better

Thanks for the great reminder
Harleena Singh recently posted..Why Family Time is Important

Reply
- On October 18, 2011 at 9:16 am Bryce Christiansen responded with... #
  
  Harleena,
  
  If you have to work on family time than we all are in trouble
  
  Seriously, you have some great writing about family on your blog. You could definitely teach us a few things we all could do better.
  
  Bryce
  
  Reply
On November 2, 2011 at 8:45 am Prosklitiria Didyma responded with... #

Thank you Lisa for this interesting post, i really enjoy reading.
The most important, as you already mention, for me is this “Leave work at work and enjoy the family”.
You must retain a clear and stable position on this and you will improve you life in general.

Reply
- On November 3, 2011 at 3:14 pm Bryce Christiansen responded with... #
  
  Good to have you here Prosklitiria!
  
  Thanks for the comment as well I hope we see you again soon.
  
  Bryce
  
  Reply

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