Balancing professional aspirations and personal life can be a daunting task. To help you navigate this challenge, we’ve gathered thirteen invaluable strategies from professionals, including Founders and CEOs. From focusing on work-life integration to setting boundaries and scheduling intentional breaks, these experts share their best tips for achieving a healthy work-life balance while also meeting your professional goals.
- Focus On Work-Life Integration, Not Balance
- Define Your Own Work-Life Balance
- Identify Your “Why” and Set SMART Goals
- Protect Your Personal and Professional Life
- Consider Life Constraints in Work-Life Balance
- Create a Structured Schedule for Work and Leisure
- Decide Your Worth and Prioritize Personal Well-Being
- Maximize Value by Starting Your Own Business
- Clarify Personal Values and Priorities
- Practice Mindfulness, Self-Care, and Ruthless Prioritization
- Embrace a Four-Day Workweek Culture
- Have Small, Actionable Goals for Consistent Progress
- Set Boundaries and Schedule Intentional Breaks
Focus On Work-Life Integration, Not Balance
I juggle my full-time engineer project management job while building Geardventure, spending quality time with my girlfriend, and catching up with family and friends. Work-life integration, not balance, is what you must seek. Here’s how I’m currently doing it:
Cut out the noise—no TV, no series, no video games. My focus revolves around work, health, and time with loved ones. Nothing else.
Non-negotiables: Absolutely no alcohol or tobacco. Two gym days, one outdoor adventure, daily meditation, whole meals, and at least seven hours of sleep. You can do a lot in 24 hours a day.
Passion Integration: Merge your passions with social time. I go outdoors on weekends with family and friends, aligning my blog with personal connections. Check out the book Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. The goal is to merge everything.
The real challenge is mental. Establishing clear priorities and maintaining good health are musts. You can’t chase big dreams with a mediocre mindset or health.
Daniel Espada, Adventurer and Engineer, Geardventure
Define Your Own Work-Life Balance
Don’t let others define your work-life balance. For some people, they might feel exhausted after working 5–6 hours, while there are also people who remain as active as they were at the beginning of the day, even after working 10–12 hours.
Your capabilities differ totally from others, and something that works for others might not work for you, and vice versa. I’ve started determining my work-life balance and how much I should give at work.
Generally, it’s 9–11 hours a day, as this company is my dream. But this also means I’m taking care of myself, and I know my limits and when to stop. This helps me tremendously in enjoying my personal life and work life.
Jean Christophe Gabler, Founder, Yogi Times
Identify Your “Why” and Set SMART Goals
You must have a strong “why.” There has to be something important to you to make you want to set boundaries at work and step away to maintain a healthy balance. Once you identify what that is, set a SMART goal.
Ensure the goal aligns with your values and the “why” behind it is powerful. Then you must create a robust action plan, or it will always just be an intention. Your plan should include small, manageable steps toward your end result.
Personal or professional, if you have a powerful “why,” values alignment, and a strong plan, you can achieve your biggest goals!
Shaina Lane, Owner and Certified Executive Coach, Premier Professional Coaching
Protect Your Personal and Professional Life
Visualize your boundaries as protective walls that keep your personal and professional worlds from constantly colliding. Having strong boundaries ensures you can excel in your career and personal life without feeling overwhelmed.
It’s about creating a space where you can thrive in both areas without compromise. Setting clear limits on when work begins and ends, as well as safeguarding your personal time, is essential to maintaining this balance.
Prerika Agarwal, Mba, CEO and Executive Coach, Inspiration Careers
Consider Life Constraints in Work-Life Balance
You’ve probably heard the old saying, “We all have the same 24 hours a day.” But I’d hazard a guess that we don’t all have the same capacity. If you’re a parent or caregiver, you already have someone requiring a portion of the time and energy you have available each day.
Or, if you have any health or mental health concerns, or are neurodivergent, you may simply have less capacity than someone without those extra considerations. When looking at creating a work-life balance that works for you, I suggest starting with taking an honest look at the life constraints you’re dealing with.
Then, with a clear picture of your available time, energy, and capacity, map out realistic professional goals for yourself that fit within that scope. There’s nothing more frustrating than setting a professional benchmark for yourself that simply isn’t possible when you take into account the life you are actually living.
Michelle Pontvert, Online Business Strategist and Educator, Michelle Pontvert
Create a Structured Schedule for Work and Leisure
As a digital nomad who is constantly on the move, maintaining a healthy work-life balance while pursuing my professional goals is essential. It’s everything!
My best strategy is to create a structured schedule that combines focused work blocks with dedicated time for exploration and relaxation. I prioritize work during my most productive hours, usually in the morning, and ensure I have a reliable internet connection.
Once I’ve completed my work tasks, I reward myself by exploring the local culture, trying new activities, and connecting with other travellers. This balance not only keeps me motivated and productive but also allows me to make the most of my unique lifestyle, making work feel less like a chore and more like an integral part of my journey.
Danielle Hu, Founder and Online Business Coach, The Wanderlover
Decide Your Worth and Prioritize Personal Well-Being
In corporate America, I was working 80 hours a week. I had no work-life balance. What did I do? I started my own business! I quickly realized I could be consumed by it if I wasn’t careful.
The first thing I had to do was decide I was worth work-life balance, and then I made a commitment to myself to treat my well-being just as important as any client or project. This requires us to prioritize exercise, good nutrition, quality sleep, meditation, and our personal life.
Like anything of significance, we will need to protect that time as if our life depended upon it. Guess what? Our business success won’t mean a thing without our health, family, and well-being. Apply your leadership and time management skills to your personal life, and you will soar!
Lorraine Bossé-Smith, Chief Solutions Officer, Concept One LLC
Maximize Value by Starting Your Own Business
As an entrepreneur who used to work a 9-5 job I wasn’t passionate about, I’m a huge advocate of starting your own business.
One big reason for that is working for yourself can give you enormous freedom about what you work on—and how much.
With the right systems in place, you can choose to take time off or reduce your workload based on your needs.
People will pay you based on the value you offer, not the time you spend.
So, my best tip is to focus on maximizing value rather than working a certain number of hours.
By reducing the time you spend working (without sacrificing results), you’ll be able to create a healthier work-life balance and focus on other pursuits or interests.
Luisa Zhou, Founder, LuisaZhou.com
Clarify Personal Values and Priorities
This goes to the heart of who you are and what you want. The clearer you are with your values and priorities, the better you can live in alignment with them and tune out everything else.
As a career coach who specializes in personal branding, I have been teaching people for years to write personal mission statements and clarify their values, then make all decisions based on them.
This allows you to say “no” to nice, interesting, and even urgent things, and focus your limited attention, energy, and time on what is most important to you.
Linda Evans, Career Coach, Launched By Linda
Practice Mindfulness, Self-Care, and Ruthless Prioritization
This is a topic I’m passionate about and coach my clients on—the leaders I work with tend to be extremely conscientious and prone to over-committing and burnout, and I’ve done it too much myself. There are three keys to avoiding this:
(1) Mindfulness — being aware of how your body’s feeling and what energizes versus depletes you
(2) Self-care — accepting that your energy isn’t limitless and you have to replenish before you can help everyone else; and
(3) Ruthless Prioritization — distinguishing between things you need to do yourself, things you can delegate, and things that don’t have to be done now (or at all).
Keeping this balance also requires you to be honest with yourself and understand your strengths and areas where it would benefit you to ask for help. Leaders who do all these things have the inner resources to handle whatever comes their way.
They’re respected for their authenticity, and they’re setting terrific examples for their direct reports and organizations to follow.
Rachel Radway, CEO, Leadership Coach and Facilitator, RER Coaching
Embrace a Four-Day Workweek Culture
One of the most effective means of achieving work-life balance is to embrace a four-day workweek culture.
First, it’s important to realize that a four-day workweek doesn’t mean sacrificing productivity. Instead, it encourages focused and efficient work during those four days. This compressed schedule forces you to prioritize tasks and eliminate time-wasting activities, resulting in increased productivity.
Second, the additional day off provides much-needed time to recharge and focus on personal well-being. It allows you to spend quality time with family and friends, pursue hobbies, and relax. This recharge is essential for maintaining motivation and creativity in your professional endeavours.
A shorter workweek can lead to higher job satisfaction and reduced stress. When you have more time for yourself and your loved ones, the overall quality of life improves.
Phil McParlane, Founder and CEO, 4DayWeek.io
Have Small, Actionable Goals for Consistent Progress
Setting small, actionable goals that you make daily progress toward can help you maintain a healthy semblance of work-life balance while simultaneously making consistent progress toward your professional goals.
Importantly, you want to take consistent steps that move you toward your larger goal, while also being mindful to not go too far too fast so that you can avoid fatigue and burnout.
One way to balance this approach is to write out your bigger professional goals, such as securing a promotion or landing a new job, and then outline the smaller steps, such as identifying targeted companies and connecting with people in your network, that you can take each day.
Dr. Kyle Elliott, Founder and Tech Career Coach, CaffeinatedKyle.com
Set Boundaries and Schedule Intentional Breaks
I strive to maintain a healthy work-life balance to tackle my professional and personal goals successfully. Some boundaries I set for myself include scheduling intentional breaks into my work week for movement, meditation, creativity, and rest.
I have a “no-scrolling” rule for the first hour of my day so that I can get through my morning routine distraction-free. I also attempt to create something for myself every day before I dive into client work.
This helps me prioritize my creative needs and get the endorphins going to carry me through a busy day of meetings, emails, and strategy sessions. I like to have walking meetings and creative brainstorms away from my desk so that I’m not in front of a screen as often.
I’ve also created boundaries for myself with working, such as not answering non-urgent emails after 6 p.m., and using Tuesdays and Thursdays as primary meeting days so that I can schedule in personal time.
