Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today I want to talk about setting boundaries so that you can balance your work life and home life.
Today’s Quote: You do have choices about how you spend your time. Balancing what you need to do with what you want to do can lead to happiness and success. —Stephen Hall
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
Work life balance. Some people will tell you there is no such thing.
That’s kind of sad if they think that.
Don’t believe them.
There absolutely is work life balance. It is, however, up to you to make it happen.
Let’s talk about what balance means to Virtual Assistants. Or more specifically, moms who are VAs.
It’s no secret that not all VAs struggle with balance.
If you are young, or single, or married but have no kids, or retired, you may not worry much about balance.
Moms almost always ask me for help finding balance.
I think balance means being able to do what you want when you want.
For the moms seeking balance, we need to first talk about what you realistically need to seek.
Think of the scales of justice. They are level, with equal amounts of weight on both sides.
That is often the vision of balance that we have.
But balance to me doesn’t always mean equal. Definitely not balancing a VA business and home life.
It’s more like a cirque de soleil show. More people jumping in and throwing you off balance while you are juggling and trying to stay upright.
It might sound topsy turvy but it really is truer to what happens, and the big reason why VAs can struggle with it.
We don’t need equal amounts of work and home, we need to be able to adjust when the balance is thrown off.
How can we do that?
Boundaries.
Boundaries are the rules you put in place to make things run smoothly. or more smoothly.
When we define what these boundaries are, it makes it easier for everyone to get the clarity they need to help you find that balance you are seeking.
Here are a few boundaries that can help you:
Office Hours
I’m sure you hear people tall about office hours all the time. But I’m not talking about telling your clients you work Tuesday afternoons a day Mon and Thursday 9 to 3. Letting your clients know generally when you work is fine but unless they need you to be available at certain times for some reason, it shouldn’t matter when you do their work.
I always stated in my contract that I typically worked during standard business hours, 9 to 5 Eastern. and that my office was closed evenings, weekends and holidays. That was enough of a client boundary for the most part.
Of course I would let them know if I wasn’t going to be in the office for a day or an afternoon, or if I was sick, but in general they knew that I was a full time VA.
Telling clients doesn’t give then access to you anytime they want. I’ll get to that in a few minutes. But it sets their expectation of when you work…during the business day. Got it.
When I talk about office hours I am more referring to your family and how you set a boundary for them.
If you have children at home with you, you know you need to work around their schedule.
My son went to daycare, and later to school, and of course my work stopped and started around his leaving and arrival or pickup times.
It’s important, and it is likely one of the reasons that you want to work from home.
However, it is essential that your family understand something (all of your family, kids are very smart!). They need to understand that in order to have mommy around, mommy needs to get her work done.
That sounds condescending and it’s meant to!
You can totally work with your family schedule, as long as you book in office time to get your business work completed.
That might mean working early in the morning or late at night, but it also means figuring out when to work when the family is home.
At my house, I do my creative work early in the morning before anyone wakes up. I can get so much writing done, in the peace and quiet. I know when my husband and son get up and I prioritize having coffee and breakfast or lunch with them when they do.
Then I go back to work till they come home again if they go to work, or until I take a break.
The more I work, the happier everyone is because I earn more money.
I tell them when I have meetings or am recording my podcasts or trainings, so they need to be quiet (group texting is wonderful, I don’t even have to leave my office to tell them my schedule!) And they help me by being quiet when I need them to be.
We split the household duties. Just because I am home doesn’t mean it’s up to me to cook, clean and do the laundry. If I can, of course I try to pop in loads of laundry while I work. But if I don’t, then we do it at night like when I worked outside the home.
So office hours is the time you need to be in the office to run your business or to do business. In my house that’s different every day, because my family works shift work.
I do typically still work standard business hours but I take lots of time with my family when they are home and then work at night when they are working too. It works for us.
It’s important to sort out when you are working and get your family to support that. Clarity is key. When they know ‘momma has a call’, or ‘momma will be done at 2’ (if you want to get some focused work time), then they know the boundary and can adhere to it.
Try it! If you are struggling to work and be there for your family, identify what you can do to out some office hours in place. It might not be the same hours every day, and it might mean disappointed little faces for an hour or two sometimes, but everyone will be better for it because you can stay working from home.
And obviously if your kids aren’t old enough to stay out of your office for an hour or two so you can get unfocused time, you may need another solution, but you will struggle with balance unless you figure it out.
When my son was young I sent him to daycare in the mornings so I could work uninterrupted and then I picked him up at lunch. You better believe I got 4 solids hours of work in while he was gone, so that I didn’t have to keep working when he got home.
I learned quickly that preparing my schedule the night before for the next day helped tremendously, and I could really max out that 4 hours that he was gone. Then when he got home, he napped (or not), and I was available for him. Then often I would work 2 more hours after he went to bed (or early in the morning before he work up), so I could bill clients 6 hours a day while he was only in daycare for a 1/2 day. At the time I was charging $25 an hour, so I made $3000 a month from my clients. Not bad, eh?
Dedicated Work Space
This one is a no brainer. It’s a boundary mostly for you.
Find a place in your home where you can work. Preferably not a family space like the living room or the dining room table.
Use a room so you can close the door at the end of the day, and stop work.
If you don’t have an office space in your home, you still want to create something that ‘closes’.
If you constantly leave your papers on the dining room table, it’s really enticing to just do one more thing.
Or if you sit with your laptop all evening on the couch, not only is it easy to putter at things all evenings long, you are also spending unfocused time on your work, which means it is taking a lot longer to do.
And, your family will feel like you are splitting your attention – that you are working all the time. You’ve heard me tell the story of my husband saying that when I used to do my puttering on the couch every evening. Working on graphics, or blog posts or newsletter copy, and I did it while we hung out. I wasn’t doing client work so I didn’t consider it working, but he and my son said ‘you work all the time’, and they were right.
Instead, I dedicate my work time to my office and closed the door when it was done. I promise you, you will work far better focused if you have a dedicated place to work – and you will fully enjoy your family time when that door is closed.
Balance comes from how your family perceives your business too. If they feel that when you used to work outside the home you left your ‘job’ there, and you were 100% home for them, then they may voice their disappointment when now you seem to be working all the time.
In my experience a dedicated office space can be a simple boundary that you have to hold yourself to, so that you both clearly understand work time is over.
Lead Times
This is a key one to balance, believe it or not.
Setting lead times for work to be done for clients is so important. Not everything is urgent. Some of it’s not even important.
Much of it doesn’t need to be done right NOW.
That’s where lead times come into play.
Lead times is the amount of time that you have between when a client sends you something to do, and when you deliver it to them. Lead time. It leads up to the deadline or the due date.
Much of the issue with our balance is due to last minute client work. Think about it. How many times a day do you check your email to see what your clients need?
Some VAS I know check it all day long. They actually leave notifications on and they know every time they receive an email.
I’m here to tell you that this is not a productive way to work. It’s disruptive and it takes up so much of your time to switch between tasks every time you hear that BING.
Instead, turn off notifications and set an alarm or a calendar time pop up to remind you to check email. Keep out of it until it’s ‘time’ for you to check. I maintain that checking email 3 times per day is sufficient for most VAs.
That’s where lead times come in. Clients should not be allowed to send you unexpected same day work – work that they need to have done the same day. They aren’t paying you at a rate that allows them instant access to you.
And even if you are only working with 2 big clients, you aren’t supposed to work like you have a job. You are running a business. Each client is important, and you need lead times to manage everyone’s expectations around work pace and turnaround times.
I used to tell my clients I needed at least 24 hours lead time for work requests. Even if someone had a weekly newsletter that I produced, I needed the copy and pieces for it the day before it was to be sent, so I could fit it into my schedule to get it done by their deadline.
At first some clients might struggle with that concept, but once they get into it I promise you it works.
It allows you to manage your own schedule. Client A’s newsletter gets published or sent out every Thursday morning at 11 am. Maybe this week I’d work on their newsletter on Wednesday because I have a bunch of meetings booked on Thursday with other clients. Maybe next week I’ll do it Thursday morning. It’s up to me, as long as it goes out on time, for their deadline. I get to manage my schedule. The lead time helps me do that.
When a client sends you a work task, ask them when it needs to be done, and schedule it accordingly. And then be very conscious of your work pace so you get things done as efficiently as possible.
Oh dear, I’ve said it. Work pace. I need to do an entire episode on this. Not today! But it’s important to the success of your business (and to achieve that balance you crave).
Remember it’s not a job – you are running a business. And you have a lot of balls in the air. Teach your clients to give you enough time to get your work done and you will both be happier for it.
Those are 3 really simple boundaries to put in place for yourself, your clients and your family.
As I said earlier in the episode, when you are clear about your boundaries, everyone understands them quickly and it makes everything so much easier for all of you.
The business is the thing that is allowing you to work from home and set your own schedule and set your own rates, so even though your family will always be more important than any business, it’s important to put the business first at clear times so that you can use it to build the lifestyle you want.
And you can balance the work with the family. Easily. You just have to choose how.
Let’s revisit our quote from today:
You do have choices about how you spend your time. Balancing what you need to do with what you want to do can lead to happiness and success.
Who doesn’t want happiness and success? I do!
You have choices about how you spend your time. We all do.
You can choose to play now, and then you’ll have to get the work done at some point. And sometimes that’s the right option.
My son is not a toddler anymore, he just turned 26. You know what he really loves? Mimosa Tuesdays. When he is off on a Tuesday, he likes to sit and drink mimosas with me in our kitchen and talk sports, or movies, or life, or whatever. So we do, sometimes. Not every Tuesday!
I get my work done as soon as I can (just like I used to when I knew he was coming home from daycare after lunch!) and then I sit and have mimosas with him.
But on a regular basis, it’s the boundaries that are in place that help everyone.
As I mentioned, my husband and son both work shift work. They are chefs in a restaurant so their schedule changes from week to week. That’s why having a flexible schedule is important for me.
Just like it’s important for you.
Lay out your regular boundaries, set the expectations for everyone, and you will enjoy that happiness and success – both!
As usual, I have a lot more to say about this, but I’m going to leave it here for today. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you next time!
Do You Need Help?
If you need help figuring out how to bring balance into your VA business and home life, get in touch with me. I’m here to help.
It’s the only reason I’m here at all, as you know. To help you become a ridiculously good VA.
I have helped hundreds of VAs who are stuck get moving through private coaching, group coaching, and live and self study trainings. If you want to talk about how we can work together, let’s connect on a Cut to the Chase call. You can book yours at YourVAMentor.com/chase
Thanks for tuning in this week! I’ll see you next time!
What You Need to Do Next:
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Click here for more tips to help you with your productivity and time management in your Virtual Assistant business.
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