Finding Your Fringe Hours: The Key to Work-Life Balance
Now more than ever, people are struggling with work-life balance. This podcast will display ways in which you can have life balance within the four walls of your home. Special guest, Melissa Langford, will teach us her strategies for juggling a work-life balance and how to be more productive with your time.
Having a work-life balance is crucial to getting the most out of your 24 hour days. Work, family, friends, and yourself are all vital to a balanced life. Many times, influencers are bombarded with other obligations and feel as though they do not utilize their time to the fullest.
This podcast will help provide some tips on how to utilize your time to the fullest potential in order to have a good work-life balance.
EPISODE 009: Finding Your Fringe Hours: The Key to Work-Life Balance
ABOUT MELISSA LANGFORD
Melissa is a wife, homeschooling mom of six children, and consumer of massive amounts of coffee. She has become an expert at finding the fringe hours of her days to use her blog as a platform to encourage stay at home moms and advocate for foster care and adoption.
THE ROLE OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN TODAY’S SOCIETY
Being that the COVID pandemic has restricted us to the confines of our home, we are now balancing a job, home, and kids all in one place. This disrupts our work-life balance as there are no boundaries to do those things in different locations. No going to work, no kids going to a physical school, and no extracurriculars outside of the home.
Our life balance is disrupted as there is much more distraction when the whole family is doing their daily tasks from home. In one room you have dad working, and in the other you have kids learning.
All of our life is meshing together into one. “When does the work stop when your home is your work?”
In order to have the balanced life you desire during these unprecedented times, it is important to use the most out of any time you have.
HOW TO USE YOUR TIME WISELY FOR LIFE BALANCE
“Time is a created thing, to say ‘I don’t have time’ is like saying ‘I don’t want to’.”
We seem to usually run out of time when we do not like the task we have to do. Look at your priorities and make time for the things that are necessities in order to have a balanced life.
You should not only like the task you are doing, but you should like the reason you are doing it. Find time to do assignments that align with your goals, not only in your work life but your personal life as well to restore work-life balance.
Decide how and when you are going to do the task and show up to do it. Keep a commitment to yourself to do it and knock it out in a period of time.
HOW CAN WE CREATE TIME TO HAVE A BALANCED LIFE
In order to have a balanced life, it is important to remember that we only have 24 hours in a day and we cannot change that. Start with planning out pillars in the day that we cannot change and have no control of. These could be things such as our kid’s karate practice or virtual classes. Next, fill in the next level, larger tasks that take bigger blocks of time with time mobility. Last, see what is left and great creative with it, these are tasks that can be done during small and distracted times of the day, known as fringe hours.
Use fringe hours for self-care or yourself aside from just less important work tasks, can’t be all work work work. This increases your productivity for the higher/more important tasks when you do them. You need a balance between doing things for yourself, and getting the needed tasks done.
This is a great way to plan out your time as it helps create a work-life balance. Look for pockets of time that are being unused. For example, using driving in the car as a time to connect/catch-up with your children or even researching keywords while your child is in piano lessons.
A balanced life also requires some “you time.” Use those fringe times to go for or walk, or take a shower.
Some great tools for maximizing your fringe hour time include Trello, Evernote, are even the grocery store apps. These will help plan out your work-life balance.
“No time spent on your business, family or relationship is really wasted”
HOW TO WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER WHEN LOOKING FOR THE BALANCED LIFE
In order to have “the balanced life” that everyone wishes for, a good piece of advice is to do something. Do not get paralyzed by not knowing what to do.
If you are stuck on what to do to maximize your time, Melissa suggests you ask yourself, “If you just had to guess, what would you do?” There is no wrong answer and at least you are not doing nothing with your time.
“Forward momentum is better than no momentum.” Every task brings you one step closer to your goal. Using your time effectively is how you can live a balanced life. Make sure you are giving your time where it needs to be.
Linked below is a free time blocking form for you to plan out your tasks easier. Click on the link below to get yours today!
WHAT’S NEXT?
Make sure you grab your FREE download >> Habit Tracker
You can connect with Melissa on Facebook Group or her website.
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LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Name Your Time with Time Blocking eBook
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