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Working long hours is necessary to be financially well off, right?
Building wealth is a marathon, not a race.
Instead, maintain a healthy, balanced life that makes sense for you. If you do, you’ll stay productive and avoid burning out.
Here are 10 work-life balance tips to avoid burning out on your wealth-building journey.
1. Define What Work-Life Balance Means To You
You need to create a work-life balance that makes sense for you.
What seems balanced to someone may not feel the same for you. Take some time to imagine what your ideal balanced lifestyle looks like. Here are some questions to help you get started:
- How many hours will you work?
- How much time during the week will you have to do fun activities?
- How much time will you spend on wealth-building activities?
Once you’re clear on what a balanced work-life looks like to you, go create it.
How?
By breaking your ideal balanced lifestyle into actionable goals. Set clear financial and lifestyle goals you’d like to achieve within the next year or two. This will ensure that you’re progressing in building wealth and a balanced life.
Use a journal to keep track of your progress on work-life balance.
2. Prioritize Your Health
Ignore your health long enough and eventually, you’ll pay for it.
An unhealthy lifestyle can lead to depression and life-threatening diseases–ones that can stop you from building wealth. If you’re constantly stressing about work, you’ll carry this stress throughout the day. At times this stress can cause insomnia, which can disrupt your productivity.
Instead, focus on eating healthier, getting great sleep, and managing your stress. Prioritizing your health won’t guarantee you won’t burn out, but it will help reduce the odds.
Better health means you’ll have more time to spend working on growing your wealth.
3. You Don’t Have Unlimited Energy
It’s great to hear stories on how some people are able to work past 2 am and wake up at 6 am. The reality is that you won’t be able to sustain this lifestyle. View yourself as a machine that’s filled with limited energy each day.
If you’re stressing about which clothes to wear and are rushing to work, that’s energy that’s being wasted. Add the extra time you’d spend working at your job, and it’s not a surprise why you’re too tired to work on anything else afterward.
You don’t have to manage every hour of your day to avoid burning out. Instead, work in Pomodoro sprints. This ensures you get a 5–10 minute break in each hour of work.
Now you’ll be able to dedicate time to your wealth-building tasks.
4. Learn To Free Your Mind
Meditating is the equivalent of rebooting your PC, but for your brain.
Each day your brain is overloaded with information, and you need a way to clear your mind.
The problem is that when your brain is overloaded with information, more neural paths link to your medial prefrontal cortex. All this means is you’re more prone to take things more personally when this happens. For example, you’ll continue beating yourself up for mistakes you’ll make.
Interestingly, research shows that meditation helps reduce the number of neural paths linking to your medial prefrontal cortex. This results in seeing things clearly and avoiding beating yourself up excessively. You’ll feel less stressed and ready to work on productive wealth-building activities.
You can find hundreds of tutorials on YouTube, blogs, or books covering how to meditate effectively. There are even apps that can guide you in your meditation journey. All you need is to be committed.
Having a clear mind will allow you to stay productive and make better financial decisions.
5. Block Out Your Time Each Day
Once you’ve defined what a balanced lifestyle is for you, fit in your day.
Having a calendar allows you to block specific times to ensure you’re completing productive wealth-building activities. More important, a calendar allows you to plan for your entire day. You plan the amount of time you’ll work.
Most people need to block out at least 40 hours each week for their jobs. Any extra time that you want to spend on other wealth-building activities is on you. But, you don’t need to work until 2 am.
Instead, plan ahead to invest 10 hours into your side hustle—working 1 hour before heading off to work and 1 hour before going to bed. Use calendars like Google Calendar or a physical agenda. Just be sure to work on a calendar you’ll consistently use.
6. Get Intentional What You Work On
To-do lists are addicting.
In the past I’d feel good checking off items, only to be disappointed by the end of the day. With “to-do” items it’s easy to procrastinate working on important tasks. The worse part is that to-do lists have no end.
While a to-do list is better than nothing, it can burn you out. After a few days of not completing all your to-do items, they’ll start to pile up. And, you’ll be stressed as each day goes by and the list gets bigger.
To cut off the unproductive tasks you need to get intentional. Think about what goal you’re trying to accomplish. Whether at work or outside of work you need to clearly view the outcome you’re looking to get.
At work, it’ll be easier since the goals that need to be accomplished will be explained to you. Your job then is to prioritize which tasks need to get completed first. But, with personal goals, you’d have to create the goals yourself.
For example, if you’re looking to start a freelancing writing business, break this goal into smaller tasks. A possible goal if you’re starting out could be to create your online portfolio. Knowing this you’d block out time each day to write articles.
Now when other tasks come your way you won’t be as easily distracted. You’ll have concrete goals and eliminate distractions that come your way.
7. Set Large Enough Goals
Unrealistic goals happen often and they can cause you to burn out. But, setting small goals that you know you can achieve isn’t the answer. Instead, set goals that are challenging enough.
Here are examples of unrealistic goals:
- Have a net worth of $500,000 in 3 years (when current net worth is $5000)
- Build an online business that generates $1000 in passive income within 3 months
Here are examples of realistic goals:
- Grow business revenue by 20% in 12 months
- Land first freelance writing client within 4 months
Building wealth is a long journey during the early stages. But, by setting realistic goals, you’ll avoid burning out and build wealth faster.
8. Remove Your Biggest Distraction
Being able to do deep work is rare nowadays.
And social media is a big reason why. Daily, you’re distracted with alerts on who liked your picture or messaged sent you a message. You mindlessly review each alert and respond to most of your messages.
By the end of the day, you find yourself short in time.
So what happens?
You either go to sleep feeling defeated or stay up late making up for the time you’d wasted. Even if you use social media to market your products or services, block out limited time for it each day. This way you can make time for your most important tasks.
9. Squeeze Fun Time Into Your Agenda
No matter what, make time for fun activities.
Focusing only on building wealth isn’t sustainable.
You’ll either be broke and miserable or rich and miserable (none of these sound good.)
Why not be happy throughout your wealth-building journey instead?
Since you’re already going to be using a calendar to block out time, make some time for your fun activities at least once a week. For example, you can take an entire Saturday off to play video games or to go on a date with your wife.
Another option can be to reward yourself daily after completing your most important tasks. If by the end of 8:00 pm you’ve completed all your tasks, watch TV for an entire hour. Think of this as your reward for being consistent.
Not bad right?
Having fun at least once a week will keep you happy and avoid burning out. Now figure out which rewards work best for you.
10. Be Grateful For What You Already Have
Giving is better than receiving.
You’ll complain less. You’ll feel happier. And, be wealthier.
Yes, you’re looking to grow your wealth but not without being grateful for what you already have. Building wealth can feel like a black hole to some people because they’ll never have enough. By volunteering your time and helping the less fortunate, you’ll be more grateful.
You’ll also avoid burning out since you’d be helping others who are in a worse position than you are. Although it may seem like you’re giving money or time away, you’ll get back more. Sometimes the same people you’ve helped will help you or someone else will.
What’s important is that you genuinely invest your time or money towards helping others, and the positive effects will carry over to you.
Push To Achieving Work-Life Balance
Imagine being financially independent 10 years from now.
Building wealth, enough to “retire” early is one of the hardest things you’ll do. But, if you’re on this journey, congrats because this is one most people never start.
As you’re working on wealth-building activities day by day, remember to enjoy the journey. Prioritize your health and make time to have fun along the way. If you do you’ll avoid burning out and reach your financial goals faster.
Try one of these tips and see how it affects your life.
This article originally appeared on Financially Well Off.
