“Workaholic.” I used to employ that phrase with such pride. As if it proved how dedicated I was to my business above all else. 

I’m still waiting for my teeny tiny trophy.

Yes, there is a time to buckle down, but to me, the hustle culture is dead. Dedicating your life to only one endeavor and letting the rest of your life fall to the wayside is no way to live and only leads to burnout. You have to live life holistically.

I ended up learning the hard way that the one thing you can never make up for is lost time. All of my energy was going to my business as the rest of my life passed me by. Kids’ first steps, time with my wife – you get the picture.

Demanding work environments make achieving a healthy work-life balance an elusive goal. One of the tactics that helped me enormously is time tracking. I know, this sounds kind of elementary, but bear with me. 

I began tracking my time. And when I saw how well it went, I asked my team to track their time as well. Not only are we all living lives with real balance, but my business is more efficient and profitable than ever before. 

How to use time tracking for more work-life balance:

1. Define your priorities and establish goals – both for your business and personal life. This will help you allocate time accordingly and ensure you’re focusing on what matters most. 
2. Use time management techniques to create a schedule. Some folks use the Pomodoro Technique, working very focused and taking short breaks. Others like the Eisenhower Matrix, which is completing the largest priorities first. Me? I do sprints, which I suppose is most reflective of the Pomodoro Technique. I (and my awesome scheduler, Erin) create blocks of time in my calendar for every hour of the workday. Every meeting, doctor appointment, lunch, walk, and break is blocked off to keep me on track. My biggest priority lately is writing, so we have writing time blocked with a couple of other authors and together, we complete writing sprints. During that time we sprint for twenty minutes, check in with the others at twenty-minute intervals for one minute to report our progress, and then hit the sprints again. For me, it’s incredibly effective because these short bursts are a more manageable time commitment. 
3. Use time-tracking tools. There are some free platforms that can help you and your employees track how much time gets spent on what aspects of your business. For instance, we used Toggl here in our office. We would simply start and stop the timer while we completed certain tasks. To note: this exercise wasn’t to “watch” our team, but to audit our time resources and understand what systems can be improved to increase productivity, and, perhaps give us time back for our lives outside of work.
4. Delegate and outsource. I’ll take a delegation deep dive in a separate blog because it’s one of the foundations of Clockwork Revised and Expanded. For now, I’ll say that yes, delegating in your business can be extremely difficult because your business is your baby! But, once I had a trusted team, I began delegating more and more. The freedom of time that delegation has created is more than I could have ever imagined. And, I know that when I’m on the road for speaking events or vacations, my business is being managed by employees who care for it as much as I do. 
5. Set boundaries. Establish clear boundaries between work and personal life, and communicate them with those around you so your availability is understood and your dedicated time is uninterrupted. 
6. Take breaks and practice self-care. And bake them into your calendar as I mentioned above. I cannot stress the importance of this enough.
7. Take regular audits. Periodically review your time tracking data, evaluate your processes, and make necessary adjustments. Identify areas where you can optimize your time management further and make conscious efforts to improve your work-life balance and avoid burnout for good.

Remember – achieving work-life balance will be an ongoing process. Commit to serving yourself and your personal life just as much as your business, and watch your life become more enriched.

Here’s to a nice, full life. 

Wishing you health and wealth always!

-Mike