BALANCING FAMILY & WORK PART TWO

​Good Morning Everyone!
​This is the second part to our three part series on how to balance work and family. On Monday's post we discussed the importance of knowing your values and the importance of keeping them. 
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Today's post we are taking our values. I recommend working with your top five for both work and home, but you can always work with a list that is sorter or longer. We are going to be working with them to determine three separate things.
1. Boundaries
​2. Support Networks
​3. Scheduling

​Boundaries
Establishing firm and clear boundaries is a very crucial part in balancing family and work life. Decide whether you will be answering work calls or emails during your family time. You should also decide when your want family time to be, For instance why not reserve weekends for your quality family time. Even if weekends are not always an option for you to dedicate solely to family time. Make sure to at least reserve some of your free time to your family. Unplugging from work not only allows you to clear your head it also allows you to relax and enjoy your family. Remember that the time you dedicate solely to your family dose not have to contain any big extravagant adventures. Use this time to have  a picnic in the park, or to take a short trip to your local ice cream shop. Even something as simple as making breakfast or walking around the neighborhood will work. The overall goal here is to connect with your family without the involvement of work. Which can be hard at first, but over time as you learn to separate the two worlds, will become increasingly more easier for you to do.

​Support
Support networks are an amazing social tool for you and your family to utilize. As we all know life has it ups and downs. This is were a great support network can really save the day. Having a support network helps to balance out family and work, by being that safety net. If for some reason your child gets sick during the day and you need someone to pick them up, but you can't leave work. You have someone from you support network to call and help you out. This can also work the other way. Say if you needed someone to cover you for the two hours it takes for you to take your child to see the doctor. While life can throw surprises your way. It can be easy to maintain balance if you belong to a great support network. If you are in need of establishing a new support group, try meetup.com. You also have the option of starting your own, you can also look for one inside of your church.

​Scheduling
Scheduling is a crucial element in making sure that everything runs smoothly for you life at home and your life at work. When creating your schedule for the day/week/month/year consider the following.
Family Values
Date Nights
Family time
Socializing outside of the family/work
Work
Think about how many hours you are working in a week. Take into consideration the extra time that may be needed if you are working on a special project. Over all make sure that when developing a schedule you are keeping in mind your values.  

​Summed Up
Knowing what is important to you is the starting point. Next you should be making sure that you have things in place that help you to achieve and maintain your values. Like the three discussed in todays posts, Boundaries, Support Networks, and Scheduling. The last part to this series will be talking about the importance of YOU.