When I started working for myself six years ago, I was working about twelve hours a day and that included weekends. I quit my full-time job at an established company to be an entrepreneur and start my own business, but I honestly had no idea what that meant. I found myself thinking about keeping clients, getting new clients, paying my bills, and eventually adding the stress of managing a team. It was a lot, and I was losing the battle. All that resulted in restless nights, long working hours, and then being diagnosed with anxiety that led me to go on medication. This was not the life I wanted or needed, so I knew that I had to make some changes.

I recall one day during the pandemic when life and everything going on got the best of me. Every call I was on talked about pandemic actions plans for schools and work. One day, I had enough. I emailed all my clients telling them that I was taking a mental health day. I was mentally exhausted. The first three hours of my “day off,” I laid across my bed and tried to think about nothing. I knew so many people who were working long hours during the pandemic and all of them were mentally exhausted. Two years later, many are still working the same and I know that it is not healthy and sustainable.

To make the change I knew I needed, I knew I had to take purposeful action. My company does its best to be there for our clients, but I knew that in order for me to do my best at work, I had to add some boundaries in my life and with my clients. It was very hard since most of my clients are very dedicated to their work and I am very aligned to the work they are doing. I had one client tell me she was taking a trip but could not get out of bed because she was mentally and physically drained. I had been warning her the day will come when her body would shut down and make her rest.

Now I have a few things I do to ensure that I have appropriate work-life balance for myself. We are all different and have to find ways to manage all the things that both compete for our time and give us joy, in ways that work best for us.

My best practices:
1. I have breakfast and lunch away from the laptop and not at my desk. Even a small, physical act like this can help create meaningful separations between work and rest, particularly if you work from home like I do.

2. I take a few 15-minute breaks to relax my eyes. Spending eight hours look at a computer is not healthy for your eyes.

3. I end my days at 5:00 pm unless there are emergencies.

4. My calendar is the way I keep organized with my personal and professional life. It includes gym time in the mornings, playing music and having downtime between 5-6 pm, doing writing or reading from 6-7pm, and dinner prep starting at 7 pm. Of course, the schedule can change when I have to travel, etc., but I generally adhere to these guidelines.

5. Absolutely no work on weekends.

6. If I do find myself working on nights and weekends (which is rare), I schedule any email I need to go out for the following morning at 8 am. I like to respect others’ time; I’m a big believer that if I want people to do that for me, I need to also model that behavior myself. I’ve realized that sending an email at 10 pm is useless. I recall when I first started working for EdLoC and I sent an email to Layla and Sharhonda on the weekend, I got scolded first thing Monday morning. They both emailed me saying, “we don’t send email on weekends in this organization.” I never did it again.

7. I turn off notifications on my phone for any work-related apps. It’s extremely hard to get things done with notifications going off all day and night.

8. Absolutely no working while on vacation. This was a hard one for me in the beginning as I have always felt the need to stay connected. I am so blessed that my clients respect my vacations and don’t email me.

9. I do not schedule calls on Mondays and Friday unless they are emergencies. I need dedicated time to strategize about the business and giving myself a break from calls.

10. I take a break from social media one weekend a month.

I know that our lives are complex and we all have different things pulling us in so many directions. What works for me may not work for others, but what I do think is a truism regardless of one’s personal situation, is that we all need to create some sort of work-life balance in our lives. When I was growing up, a lot of us were raised to believe that we go to college, get a good paying job, buy a house, get married, have kids, work every day, and then retire. Some folks call this the “American Dream.” In 2023, we have high interest rates, home and apartment prices are rising, food prices are astronomical, and still many of us work a ton of hours trying to acquire the “American Dream” when for so many it is not a reality.

People are getting burned out and stressed from life. We must make having good mental health a priority. We have to cope with the normal stresses of life and work productively and do it in a way that makes us happy and fulfilled.