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Work-Life Balance is never easy, but it does seem that some manage to pull this feat off better than others.  Is it luck or something else?

Some Guys have all the Luck? Achieving life-work balance takes more than luck. Image courtesy of stockimages.

I recently met another dad, and I have to admit that after our conversation I was a little jealous. This new friend does not commute back and forth to work. Instead, he works very close to his home and as a result he spends far less time traveling each day. Because he doesn’t commute, he spends around an hour of every day playing with his young daughters at home before heading out to work. Achieving the perfect work life balance is rarely easy, but this dad is able to create a schedule that allows him important quality family time with his children.

Achieving Work-Life Balance

I am sure many dads (and moms) face this issue each and every day. The twangs of jealousy made me wonder how many people think about this.

• Would you be willing to make less money if it meant spending more quality time with your family?
• Do you place a priority on quality family time in the choices that you make in life?
• What steps could or would you take to spend more time with your children so that you could teach them important values and place a focus on the family unit and a good work life balance?

Although I wish I had the luxury of not having to commute, so that I too could spend quality family time with my 6 children in the morning, I still firmly believe that family cannot take a backseat to work. I try incredibly hard to make my family my most important priority day in and day out. It is not easy to get the right work life balance as most of us parents know, but if we push ourselves really hard, we can have the same quality family time, just at a different time of day.

 How to Achieve Work-Life Balance

The keys to achieving balance between work and life, that is, the key to spending time doing what MUST be done to pay bills and what NEEDS to be done in spending quality time with family are…

1. Prioritize: Determine what can be eliminated from your schedule and do so.
2. Delegate: If you can pay someone to do something you would otherwise do yourself, delegate it to them.  Remember too, that chores around the house performed by children both teach them responsibility AND free up time to spend with you when you are home from work.
3. Time-Management:  Time can either be a slave or a master.  We determine which.