Working from home has its benefits (ahh, the remote laptop lifestyle, coffee all day, pee in your own bathroom, if you have little ones…they can be close to you), but it can also make it harder to maintain a healthy work-life balance as an entrepreneur. Burnout is freaking real. While working from home, we need to be more mindful of our working routines and habits to avoid burnout. I’m sharing my creme de la creme of tips to have a better work-life balance as an online business owner in this post. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, these tips and tricks will help you get your balance back on track. (This is coming from a recovering workaholic-in-love-with-my-business-do-anything-at-anytime-for-my-clients-entrepreneur) 😉

1) Set Your Boundaries

This cannot be stressed enough (good fences make good neighbors, rights?). Boundaries are important but especially for entrepreneurs who work from home. It’s easy to not set or stick to your boundaries when you are building a business and love what you do. However, we all need to protect our energy and set some boundaries to have a much more productive experience while working remotely.

Here are a few boundary ideas that might work for you:

• Have a set time that you stop working (i.e. create your own schedule. You can split it up and work in smaller shifts, but outline the times you are ON and OFF of work)
• Create a morning routine that doesn’t involve checking your phone or email immediately
• When you are done work for the day, turn off ALL phone notifications or turn on Do Not Disturb
• Don’t say ‘yes’ to things right away; sometimes, you might need to consider something for a night before jumping in (and then regretting saying yes later)
• If you’re a contractor, have your boundaries laid out in black and white right in your contract: does not work holidays and these specific dates (birthday, anniversary, etc); will return any communication within 24 business hours, you get the point.

2) Ask for Help

As a CEO and business owner, it’s important to know when to ask for help. We all need help sometimes and collaborating, or hiring is essential for business growth.

3) Take Breaks

Sometimes we can get so involved in our work that we forget to take breaks. Make sure you are making yourself a priority and scheduling breaks throughout the day, and stick to them. Don’t forget lunch! If you tend to forget breaks, you might want to start setting alarms on your phone, so you intentionally take those breaks. Don’t answer your phone, Slack, or ClickUp notifications until it’s over. Nothing in business is such an emergency that you can’t recharge.

4) Map Out Your Week

At the start of the week, take a look at your projects, schedule, and tasks for the week. (I personally love Sunday afternoons, no clients contacting me, a fun movie in the background, and a nice cup of tea. One hour and my whole week is mapped out and I feel calm.) Then, you can start to move things around to try to batch as much as possible. For example, if you have a lot of graphic design tasks throughout the week – move them all to the same day, unless something is time-sensitive.

5) Check-In With Yourself to Avoid Burnout

Make checking in with yourself a priority. A good quality pulse check allows you to see what priorities you have and what is causing you stress. Do a check-in at the end of the week to reflect on how your week went – were you overbooked? Did you try to take on too much? What can you do next week to avoid that?

If you’re feeling way too overwhelmed with the back-end of your business or your day-to-day business operations, check out my packages for my online business manager services. I work with entrepreneurs like you to help you streamline, organize, and automate your business.