How A Virtual Assistant Can Help You Achieve A Healthy Work-Life Balance

The numbers are pretty astounding. 

According to data provider SEMrush, 81% of business owners work nights, and 89% work weekends. Additionally, a large percentage of small business owners work more than 49 hours per week. 

Yet the science is clear that working more than 40 hours a week is not good for your health or the health of your relationships.

Specifically:

• Working more than 40 hours a week is associated with increased alcohol and tobacco consumption, unhealthy weight gain in men, and depression in women.

• Working more than 10 hours a day is associated with a 60 percent jump in unhealthy cardiovascular issues.

• Ten percent of people working 50 to 60 hours a week report relationship problems.

While every professional (and grown adult, for that matter) struggles from time to time to manage their work and personal lives, small business owners and entrepreneurs have an even tougher challenge balancing competing priorities. In addition to the difficulties many face juggling work, relationships, health, and family goals, managers and small business owners also wear all the necessary hats to keep their business running. They do ALL the work. And often, they feel that they alone are responsible for keeping the wheels spinning and the business growing. 

Without the help of a virtual assistant, a small business owner’s responsibilities weigh heavily on them and make the elusive work-life balance feel even more out of reach. 

PITFALLS ON THE PATH TO FREEDOM

Ironically, most small business owners or entrepreneurs set out on their path to avoid stress! They want to run their own business so that they can be free from the burdens of working within a corporate environment. They want to feel invigorated by the innovative process of building something unique to themselves and creating something meaningful that they can call their own.   

Entrepreneurs are usually passionate, creative, and highly energetic people. They seek to be their own boss and work for themselves. Ideally, the business ownership path would allow them to choose their priorities. "Being the boss" should let them decide when to work, when to play, where to live, when to build or grow their family, et. cetera. 

However, they often don't foresee or expect the pitfalls and potholes on the path to that freedom. 

More often than not, entrepreneurs and small business owners get sidetracked by tedious, time-consuming tasks and the exhausting day-to-day work of running a business. The work-life balance becomes even more evasive, and the freedom they desire slips further and further out of reach.

SMALL BUSINESS BALANCE CHALLENGE

When managing a small business, every little thing seems as important as the next. The relentless tempo of the daily to-do makes entrepreneurs feel overworked and overwhelmed, burnt-out, and mentally exhausted. Stress can snowball. Fried circuits make attention-to-detail that much more difficult, making accomplishing small, tedious tasks even harder. 

The passion and energy needed to innovate and maneuver into new areas stagnates. 

Being stressed and beleaguered can be a drain on relationships and cause significant problems between spouses and family members. Stress can often lead to depression and other mental health issues, to say nothing of the physical toll stress exacts on a body. 

Not prioritizing healthy eating or exercise or choosing to self-soothe by using tobacco, alcohol, or drugs can lead to long-term problems and a shortened life expectancy. Seeking short-term relief from stress can mean making choices that have detrimental or even dangerous effects in the long run.

Getting the work-life balance right is essential.

SETTING YOUR PRIORITIES: THE PATH TO GOOD HEALTH, WELL-BEING, AND POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS

When balancing work and personal life responsibilities, experts agree there are two main steps to take when setting priorities:

Determine what needs to be done.

and

Decide the order in which to do the tasks.

Freedom Makers believes - and is not alone asserting - that there is a third, and perhaps most important step when it comes to prioritizing:

Choose to let go of some tasks and responsibilities to protect your health and personal life.

True prioritizing means deciding that the most important tasks get worked on first. An entrepreneur who decides that their health, well-being, and relationships are the most critical items on their to-do list will be more likely to embrace the idea of handing less essential tasks off to someone else. 

However, putting "life" before "work" can feel like a conflict when your small business is your "life's work." 

Trusting someone else to care for something you have created can feel like a massive undertaking. But choosing to do so can mean the difference between experiencing a breakdown or having a breakthrough.

WHAT THE RIGHT VIRTUAL ASSISTANT CAN DO

Virtual assistants are independent professionals who provide critical support services to businesses and entrepreneurs from a remote environment. They are highly-skilled contractors and can help with a wide variety of tasks, ranging from administrative and technical to marketing and even creative work.

Freedom Makers provides a free task audit on their website to help small businesses decide how a virtual assistant could best assist the company. This valuable tool helps business owners and solopreneurs determine which tasks or systems could or should be outsourced to a virtual assistant. By working through the prompts the task audit asks, a business owner can see an honest assessment of which tasks only they can do and which could be done by a virtual assistant. 

Tasks typically outsourced to a virtual assistant include, but are not limited to:

• Daily office functions like making/receiving phone calls
• Appointment scheduling
• Calendar management
• Making travel arrangements
• Managing email accounts
• Blog writing
• Bookkeeping
• Social media engagement and scheduling
• Graphic design
• Website content management and design services
• Marketing services
• Research
• Project coordination
• Event management
• Customer Relations Management (CRM) / Database support

Virtual assistants improve productivity and free up a business owner's time by taking care of essential, recurring, and tedious tasks. They can vastly improve any small business owner's productivity. The relief, lowered stress, and renewed energy managers feel knowing the daily to-do list is being handled professionally brings a significant benefit to any business.

Many factors go into determining a virtual assistant's pay rate, but the fact that a virtual assistant can be hired for as many or as few hours as needed means there is an affordable, talented, hard-working virtual assistant for every small business that needs one. 

Moreover, a virtual assistant does more than just physical, tactical to-do list tasks for a business. The impossible-to-quantify value of a virtual assistant lies in the intangible benefits they provide. By delegating specific tasks to virtual assistants, business owners have more time and energy to focus on the core mission of their business. Freed from the stress and exhaustion of executing daily, tedious tasks, entrepreneurs have the space to reevaluate their priorities. 

Help and balance are within reach when a virtual assistant is brought into the equation.

BALANCE IS WITHIN REACH

Every individual has the same number of hours in their day as everyone else. The allocation of those hours is within each person's control, dependent on their responsibilities and how they choose to prioritize their time. How a person spends their day can often determine how they feel about their life, which is why setting out to achieve a healthy work-life balance is an extremely worthwhile endeavor. 

For small business owners and entrepreneurs, the struggle for balance is exceedingly difficult… and therefore, even more essential to obtain. An excellent first step on the path to true freedom and happiness is outsourcing busy work and stressful, tedious tasks to an experienced virtual assistant. 

Freedom Makers' military spouse virtual assistants are dynamic, service-minded individuals who are proactive and communicative problem solvers. They consistently contribute to their client's success by supporting their clients' choice to pursue a healthy work-life balance. They have helped countless others… and are ready to help you today.