As a female entrepreneur, work challenges, societal and personal expectations, and other issues will weigh you down if you don’t find a way to juggle them all. This article discusses ten strategies you’ll need to maintain a healthy work-life balance as a female entrepreneur.
Life as a Female Entrepreneur
Life as an entrepreneur comes with a rollercoaster of emotions, responsibilities, and challenges. But as a female entrepreneur, it’s even more, as you’ll have to deal with all that in addition to meeting the societal expectations heaped on you for being a woman and handling household responsibilities, which include childcare.
Women are expected by society to wear different caps at different times and to be excellent at it. As a female entrepreneur, you’re expected to make time to take care of the home: do the dishes, look after the kids and give them the right home training, and make time for your relationship or marriage.
But even with the challenges, the number of female entrepreneurs has continued to increase in recent times. This is evident in the recent report by the World Economic Forum, which found that women started 49% of new businesses in the US in 2021.
Therefore, you’re not alone if you just started a business and are already burdened with the challenges that come with being a female entrepreneur. Read on to discover how you can run your business and personal life successfully while making an impact as a female entrepreneur.
10 Strategies to Maintain a Work-Life Balance as a Female Entrepreneur
These strategies will help you successfully manage your life and business without letting any part suffer:
1. Have Realistic Expectations
Everything good in business and life begins with a plan. Setting realistic expectations in your relationship, personal life, and business helps you maintain a healthy work-life balance. This comes after you’ve assessed your abilities and determined how far you can push yourself and what you can achieve with each move.
Setting realistic expectations takes a lot of pressure off your mind and gives you the room to relax and focus your best energy on the right things. This affects your business outputs because you will no longer be working to meet arbitrary deadlines. You’ll also have time for your relationships, kids, family, and most importantly, yourself.
2. Set Boundaries
Once you’ve set realistic expectations for your business, personal life, and relationships, it becomes easier to set boundaries. You now know how much effort to put into work and how much time you have to spend with your family. Dedicating fifteen hours a day to work might seem like the best thing your business needs to grow. But the truth is, you’re only working so hard to get yourself overwhelmed. And when you eventually break down, you’ll end up leaving loads of tasks undone.
In the same vein, allowing your relationship or personal life to take up a major part of your time will only leave you with more work. Therefore, in order to strike a balance, you have to set boundaries. You can do this by having a separate room in your house where you go to work without disturbance. And when you’re out of the room, you know to shut off your mind from all work-related worries.
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3. Cultivate Healthy Habits
To create and maintain the work-life balance you crave as a female entrepreneur, you need to cultivate healthy habits. The habits you form and follow determine the success of your business, personal life, and relationships.
You should strive to create healthy emotional, financial, and physical habits. These three nourish your spirit and keep you effective and productive. A physical, emotional, or financial breakdown will not just harm you; it will affect your business and everything else around you.
4. Time Management is Key
You can’t effectively run a business, maintain quality relationships, take care of family, and live a good life without proper time management. Time management is one of the key skills you need to be a successful female entrepreneur.
There should be time for everything, and your ability to recognize this helps you maintain a good work-life balance as a female entrepreneur. To effectively manage your time, you should have a schedule for all your activities. At first, it would feel like a routine, but with time, you’ll get used to it as it brings the needed results.
5. Seek the Support of Your Family and Close Friends
You can’t do everything alone; it’s impossible. While you’re out working, someone has to be taking care of your home, your kids, and other engagements.
This is where your family comes in. There’s no harm in giving your partners tasks to perform in the business or the house. You can also have your friends come in when extra hands are needed. The truth is, no one can survive in isolation. The sooner you realize this, the better you get at managing your work-life activities.
6. Make Time for Relaxation
You need a healthy amount of rest to perform at your optimum level. You might not agree with this until you get overwhelmed with work and realize that doing it all at the same time doesn’t reduce the workload.
Furthermore, you’ll always have work to do and targets to meet. But it’s important that you spare time to embark on that vacation, go on that date, or get a healthy dose of sleep. Try this and see how recharged you’ll be to resume work in due time.
7. Know When to Push Harder
There are seasons when your efforts at work are most productive, and there are periods when you achieve little even with the best work input. Know these periods and create a plan that helps you take advantage of them accordingly.
Going all in during the fertile seasons can yield massive results, allowing you to focus on other things during the dry seasons. This ensures you stay productive in both periods while keeping a healthy work-life balance.
8. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Comparing yourself to other female entrepreneurs who appear to have the perfect work-life balance can only do more harm. Of course, it’s great to learn from others. But it’s wrong to assume they have more control over their lives than you do.
Comparisons are harmful for a variety of reasons, including a lack of proper information and self-belief. The person to whom you are comparing yourself may have been in the business for years before you or may have received more support from friends and family. If you investigate properly, they might not even be doing better than you.
Therefore, there’s no need for comparisons. They only belittle your efforts, put you under more pressure, and ensure you eventually fail.
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9. You Can Say No
It is not a crime to say no to a deal that doesn’t meet your standards. Yes, you don’t have to tolerate it in the hope that things will get better with time. They will never get better unless you decide to put them in order.
Do not agree to work past your scheduled hours or choose pleasure over work. There’s a reason you set expectations and boundaries. It is for moments like this.
Learn to say no to your friends, partner, and even kids, especially when they’re not obeying your set boundaries. You might feel guilty at first, but with time you’ll realize how much difference it makes.
10. Exercise Renews You
Your body and mind need a healthy amount of physical exercise. Make time to go to the gym, take a walk, jog, or do any physical activity that pumps a good amount of endorphins into your body. This gives you an instant feel-good effect, which you need to stay productive at work. But most importantly, it ensures you stay healthy and productive for years to come.
Conclusion On Maintaining a Healthy Work-life Balance as a Female Entrepreneur
It’s important to determine what work-life balance means to you. This is because you have a different view of what makes life fulfilling and worth it, and the components might be different from what society has made them to be.
To you, it might be just work, relationships, and health; to someone else, it might be an entirely different set of things. Determining what yours is will help you plan your life as a female entrepreneur.
