5 Tips to Balance Your Work and Home Life

There's nothing more rewarding than owning or running your own business, or knowing that you've played a key role in the success of someone else's. The only problem is, success comes at a price-and all too often the cost is your personal life! So what do you do when the separation between your work life and your home life becomes virtually non-existent? Here are some great tips on how to separate your work life and your home life to give you the best of both.

1) Decide when closing time's going to be-and stick with it. If your work day never ends your family and/or "me" time is never going to begin. Wrap it up at 5 or 6, and don't do anything else unless it absolutely, positively WILL NOT wait until tomorrow.
2) Take advantage of some flexible scheduling options! One of the privileges of not being paid by the hour is that you often have a lot of flexibility in your schedule (as long as you're getting done what you need to get done). That means that weeks you find yourself with no choice but to crank in some late hours you can duck out of the office for an hour or two to have lunch with the family, making sure everyone knows you haven't forgotten about them.
3) Join a gym! It's hard to find time to exercise when you're putting in 40+ hours per week, but the longer you spend sitting in front of a desk the worse you're going to feel. By joining a gym your investment in your gym membership will force you to find time to balance your work and home life.
4) Commit to spending time with family and friends. If you commit to joining your friends for dinner every Wednesday, or taking part in a book club every other Sunday, you'll be obligated to walk out of the office and into life outside of work.
5) Build a support network. When you're buried under a pile of paperwork so high you can't see to dig your way out it's easy to get bogged down with stress. Having a supportive network of friends to help you handle your housework, run errands, take care of the kids or just lend an ear to remind you there's life away from the office will go a long way toward helping you find that ideal balance between your work and home life and remind you why you love doing what you do.