The Busy Parents Ultimate Work Life Balance Cheat Sheet

Busy Parents – Do you love Cheat Sheets?

I do! Anything that can give me a tip or a trick or a hack to save me time or money or my sanity in this very busy Parent Boss Life, I am all over.

Even if I only get 1 thing from that cheat sheet, it is ones step closer to feeling like I have more control. More time. More options on how to keep everything ticking along when life gets busy.

So here are our top tips, our Cheat Sheet, for the Ultimate Work Life Balance for Busy Parents.

 

1. View your time as the most precious resource that you have and jealously guard it.

 

You shouldn’t waste your time going to the supermarket anymore.

Or the pet store. Nor the chemist. Not to any place that offers a delivery service, that you go to regularly.

Driving all over town and walking up and down aisles is not the best use of your time, when you are a busy parent. Use the resource of online shopping and delivery to get more time. Start doing this ASAP.

 

2. Keep space in your schedule.

 

Overscheduling ourselves and our kidlets is something we can tend to do. That means we are forever looking at the clock, feeling the pressure of having to go somewhere or do something.

When there is no space, there is no time to chill. No time to just be. No time for rest. And that erodes feelings of work life balance, because, where is the down time?

Resist the urge to do something every day. You need a day where the clock doesn’t exist and you don’t have anywhere to be.

If that makes you twitchy, then you DEFINITELY need to do this ASAP! 🙂

 

3. Teach people when you are available.

 

These days, people send texts, emails and messages at all time of the day and night. And because we have our phones on us almost 24/7 or messages coming to our watches, it can be very easy to just answer them.

You need to set boundaries around when you are available. I’m not talking emergencies here. I am talking about stuff that can wait for you to answer.

We have a guideline that we don’t post anything in our work message group outside the hours of 8am-8pm. We want to respect our team’s work life balance and not make them feel compelled to answer their bosses outside those hours.

By the same thinking, we don’t answer our teams questions if they aren’t an emergency outside those hours either. We all need a break and by teaching people when you will answer them, you can guard your ‘off’ time.

This goes for Parent Club and Tennis Club and anyone else who wants a piece of you Busy Parent!

 

4. Put ‘appointments’ in your calendar that give you me time.

 

It can be hard to say no sometimes for some people, me included, so one of the easiest ways to get some space in my week is to put ‘appointments’ in my calendar that make me unavailable at that time.

I schedule them as “Ted appointment” and I’ll elude to a business appointment or a medical appointment if someone asks. But there is no appointment. Just an hour or two of good old me time.

And if something pops up that I want to do, then I just cancel the appointment. Call it a white lie if you want to, but having dedicated space for yourself in a busy week is one way to ensure some work life balance.

 

5. Get out of doing things that feel like drudgery to you.

 

Many things we do in a day, like cook dinner every night, or do laundry, can feel like drudgery if you hate doing it. And where is the balance in your day, the joy to equal the drudgery, if all you are doing is something you don’t enjoy day in and day out.

Find a way out of doing the thing you hate. If it’s cooking, get your partner to take it on, while you do another chore instead.

Or find a meal service that brings meals to you. Consider only cook 2 nights a week, making enough leftovers/base ingredients for a new meal that you can then eat for another 2-4 nights. And on the last night, go out to eat!

Think of a way to stop doing the chore you hate. There are so many services available now days to take care of all this stuff for you – cleaners, gardeners, laundry services, meal services, grocery delivery, dog walking services. You name it, you can find some way to have it done for you.

Then you can let go of the ‘ugh’ feeling you used to get when you thought about doing this thing and feel a little more joy about the fact that you don’t have to deal with this anymore.

 

6. Do something physical outside.

 

When the day has been full on or even an absolute shocker, we find that getting outside and doing something physical is a good way to get out of our own head.

Fresh air. Adrenalin pumping. Different scenery. It all helps to clear off some of the day. I’m not talking about a run or anything like that. We walk our dogs twice a day for 1/2 hour each time and even that helps.

When it has been days of being busy or stressed at work, sometimes a walk on a beach or a hike in the Otways is needed to feel back in balance.

Nature does it for us every time. Nature with no one around is even better. We definitely recommend that you try this one ASAP.

 

7. Laugh.

 

Laughter. Fun. Joy. All these things have a way of disappearing when life is full on and yet, this is where we get balance. Life isn’t all about working all the time and paying the bills, with no fun at all.

Where is your enjoyment? Did you have fun today? What made you laugh?

For me it’s:

Gogglebox on Channel 10. Funny movies. AFV on Disney+. Game show bloopers on YouTube. Stand up comedy specials on Netflix.

Dancing at our kidlets recent school Disco and embarrassing our 12 year olds. Practicing the Nutbush with the team at work, getting ready for our 12 year olds school disco! Dance parties in the car on the way to school.

Small things but things that make us laugh and have some fun. Things that can easily happen every day. So at the end of the day, we can look back and say “yeah, that part was good today.”

 

Want more?

 

Then join our Facebook Group – PB Network – where you can let us know what you do, to make sure you have Work Life Balance as a Busy Parent.

Or if you need more in-depth strategies on how to get more Work Life Balance and Flexibility in your life, join us in our 90 day “Live your BEST Parent Boss Life” Mastermind.

90 days working on your business and your life. Ensuring you share the mental load. Having you work as a team. Giving you strategies to employ at home that give you some space. Finding ways to train your team, so that your business runs without you in there everyday, but still maintains your standards. And it’s customised to you, so you can live YOUR BEST Parent Boss Life.

You have one life to lead, Busy Parent Bosses, so let’s make sure it is a good one!