Balance Your Work and Home Life Better This Summer

Summer has a way of making it even more difficult than usual for people to want to go to work. Maybe it’s the sun shining in the brilliant blue sky or the fact that your kids are home and you want nothing more than to take them to the park or the beach but you’re stuck in your office instead. Either way, burnout is a lot more common in the summer months than any other time of year, which is why you have to find a way to better balance your work and home life.

Schedule Relaxation

I work from home and during the week I cram so much into my Monday to Friday schedule that I don’t relax at all. On the weekends, I cram so much into making sure my husband and I have fun with our kids and our friends and family that we don’t relax. I learned the hard way that sometimes you have to just say no to invitations to parties and events and schedule some time to do nothing but stay home and relax; otherwise, you’re going to burn out.

Lose Unimportant Activities

Do you find yourself in the office a lot longer than you need to be because you can’t seem to get anything done in time to go home at your usual time? You need to drop things that aren’t important so you can get out of there at a decent hour and live your own life. Make it a pact to stop visiting your social media websites, answering personal texts or emails or checking your phone every five seconds. You don’t need to go to lunch with the coworker you know is going to keep you out for at least an hour when you can grab something you enjoy, spend 15 minutes sitting in the sun eating and enjoying the weather and the other 45 finishing things so you can go home on time.

Outsource

Something else I learned along the way is that time is money. Every time I have to go to the grocery store or water my plants (though I actually really enjoy this) or do more than the basic dusting, mopping and dishes, I’m losing work time and money. After considering how much I make per hour, my husband and I decided that anything I have to do that takes an hour or more that can be outsourced for less than my hourly wages can be outsourced. I can pay hire someone for 10 percent of what I make in an hour and have them do all of that for me, so I can work and get things done faster.