Work / Life Balance

How you balance 4 businesses and personal life - if you struggle, why and how to change?

When our Creative & Content lead asked me to write a piece on this I knew straight away it would be a good one to get into, and let me tell you - the juggle is very real. 

I have memories from when Edie was tiny and trying to work from home whilst caring for a 6 week old baby. I was ahead of the WFH curve back in 2016! Edie was in a bouncer, I was fretting about my laptop ringing with a video call in a different room. I couldn’t possibly miss the call, so returned to find Edie having kicked her way down and out of the chair that I hadn’t properly strapped together. The vision haunts me to this day. 

I’m often reminded by my wonderful Dad - “you will not get this time again”, and of course he’s talking about the children's ages not the work meeting or business opportunity. 

Getting things done in a fraction of the time is just how I roll these days - I’ve found that I’m so much more productive, squeeze tasks into tiny windows between pickups, whilst waiting for something else and am always multi tasking. This might be a result of working for myself rather than others, or being a working Mum maybe a combination of two. 

Saying it as it is has never been a strength of mine when it comes to struggle, or emotion. If it’s a work thing I’m pretty matter of fact but I would hide the fact that I’d got commitments outside of work, wanting to maintain this appearance of totally having my **** together. What I’ve had to get comfortable with is being that bit more transparent - school, Nativity, Easter, Sports Day, Illness - the list naturally goes on. And on.