How is life balance defined? In the early years after I first started my business Blue Zenith Design + Strategy, I was still also Mom, raising my two children. I’ve watched as they left to go off to college and step into their own lives. During the beginning years it was super important for me to enjoy the freedom to be with my family whenever I could. I didn’t want to miss out on meaningful events or holidays, teacher meetings, concerts, award ceremonies. It was important for me to help with homework; to be present when needed.
define life balance?
The human need to seek balance on our lives is in all of us. Regardless of what drives us, we all strive to keep a balanced life, where that balance means that there will be times we need to put family or self-first. There are also instances that we need to put work first. That sense of balance, or you can call it control, is something that is instinctual when we make the choice to become an entrepreneur. We value somethings higher than a paycheck; we do this work for something larger than ourselves, for our family, for a sense of personal satisfaction and how we change the lives of our clients. This provides a sense that we are part of something bigger.
Technology empowers entrepreneurs
Over the past ten years the way we conduct business has changed because of the many opportunities technology provides us. Cloud based tools have allowed us to work from just about anywhere. Those tools give us access to operate our businesses and be just an email away from the pulse of activity. In a great sense we are empowered by technology to stay connected to whatever business we do. We are also interconnected to our family and friends, to our clients, to our business, our tasks, our day to day information and business teams. We seek a sense of balance because the lines are no longer drawn between when we are at work and when we are at home. Technology has blurred the lines between how we now separate our lives. That sense of balance can only come when we utilize technology for the power it provides us. So as technology empowers us it also confines us and redefines that blurred space with another level of complexity.
Customize the power
Use the power of technology to build your life as you choose it to be. Organizational tools, calendars, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools, all can help organize your business and life. Productivity tools will keep you on track, allow you to be productive and accomplish your goals. Use the tools that work for you! There’s a reason so many exist – it’s because each of us work differently, just as there’s so many different bound journals and systems out there, it’s the same with online tools. Experiment with some to find the ones that are most efficient for you. Utilize these tools to keep organized, make you more productive, and stay more balanced in life.
The online tools we use
Our recommendations:
Acuity Scheduling for scheduling meetings with our clients and potential clients
Wrike as our project task management system to keep track of tasks and goals
Evernote to organize our documents between workspaces
Podio to organize our business workflows
Kajabi to deliver our online course
WordPress Gravity Forms to collect information from potential clients before meeting with them
G-Suite for our BlueZenith.com email, to allow our team access to the Google suite of business tools
Google docs, spreadsheets, drive to exchange documents between team members
Zoom to conduct virtual online meetings, with clients and between team members when working remotely
My recommendation to every business owner is to experiment, seek and find the tools that work into your business workflows and processes. Use these cool tools to create systems that will operate more efficiently and effectively so that you can be more productive when working. The optimum advantage is that you can save more time that can be spent to be exactly where you choose to be when work is complete.