You’ve read the advice countless times. “Make sure you switch your computer off at 5 pm.” “Never check your emails during family time.”

This “helpful advice” always ends up making you feel guilty because at this stage of your career, setting hard boundaries isn’t always possible. Whether you’re building a business or working as an employed executive, evenings and weekends spent at work are sometimes inevitable.

Of course, time off work is crucial for your wellbeing. Shutting out the noise and spending time with your loved ones is very important, even if it’s difficult to get away from work.

But when it comes to your day-to-day routine, it may be useful to take an “integration over separation” approach to work-life balance.

Here are four realistic ways to balance long hours with your personal life.

1. Save easy admin for downtime

Depending on what your role entails, your work could vary in intensity week-to-week. For instance, if your business is in construction, you may spend a lot of time onsite for weeks at a time, then have a month or so with less to do.

Or, you could have a high-intensity office-based role, meaning you’re glued to a laptop in the evenings and at weekends.

In any case, your role will inevitably require admin. Try leaving this for your “downtime”.

This helps because:

• Responding to email queries, updating your social media pages, or dealing with financial administration may not require as much mental energy as other aspects of your job.
• Admin can be done from home, a coffee shop, or while you’re travelling, giving you more flexibility.
• You could stack these tasks with other parts of your routine. For example, make a few easy calls while getting some fresh air first thing in the morning.

Of course, you’d probably rather not do admin during your downtime. But if you’re saving difficult or site-specific jobs until the evenings and weekends, this could reduce your time at home and place strain on your personal life.

2. Focus on small daily moments of connection and recuperation

While it won’t always be possible to spend an entire evening or weekend with your loved ones without needing to check in with work, small daily moments carry serious weight for your wellbeing and relationships.

As an example, if it’s unrealistic to be able to pick your children up from school every day, make sure you still take 5 – 10 minutes to connect with them when you do get home.

Reading a bedtime story or eating dinner with them (phone-free) means the world. Even if you can’t spend as much uninterrupted time with them as you’d like, don’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater”.

The same applies to other aspects of your life:

• If you can’t get to the gym, a 10-minute home workout will do.
• Catching up with your spouse on the phone is better than not speaking to them at all.
• Spending a few moments sitting quietly or walking outdoors, without wearing headphones, could greatly improve your day.

This is the “integration over separation” approach in action.

3. Block out chunks of family time in your calendar

When you feel like the busiest person on the planet, quality family time doesn’t happen by accident. You won’t be able to achieve present, phone-free connection every day – as so many unhelpful people will advise – so it helps to put time in the calendar and stick to it like a work commitment.

Although it can feel odd to rigorously schedule time with those you love most, it could be the antidote to disconnecting from your spouse, children, and wider family.

Tips for successfully scheduling down time include:

• Book it in advance. You may wish to discuss this monthly with your partner or spouse.
• Set expectations with your team and customers / clients. Warn them in advance that you won’t be contactable and set an “out of office” message so clients know who to contact in your absence.
• Don’t feel pressured to make it perfect. An afternoon on the sofa watching films with your kids could be just as valuable as taking them to the zoo or going out for a meal.

You could be thinking: “This doesn’t sound like integration.”

Follow the “integration not separation” approach, and you may find you can fully disconnect more frequently. Integrating time-consuming jobs into your weekday evenings means you could carve out Sunday afternoons to be totally present with your family, to name but one example.

4. Work with us and remove the personal finance burden from your shoulders

Your personal wealth is a crucial building block for a secure future – not just for yourself, but for the next generation too.

Working with us at iQ Financial means:

• Knowing your investments are balanced, well-managed, and overseen by professionals
• Having the right guardrails in place to give you peace of mind
• Gaining precious time back that can be spent on your family and wellbeing
• Benefiting from ongoing one-to-one support from a specialist who cares about your goals.

To find out more, email us at clients@iqf.ie or call 353 71 915 5560.

Please note

This article is for information only. It does not constitute advice.

It describes financial planning services that iQ Financial can offer to you. Financial planning services are not regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.

The value of your investments (and any income from them) can go down as well as up and you may not get back the full amount you invested. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

Investments should be considered over the longer term and should fit in with your overall attitude to risk and financial circumstances.