Balancing Your Personal and Professional Lives

Oh, nice throw Lindsay. Thanks Rosie. As a freelancer and my own boss, how can I separate my personal and professional life? Great question. Rosie. As you and I both know, sometimes you can't. It's all life. What you can do is establish and stick to boundaries that work. For you. Lindsay, you are preaching to the choir. Me and boundaries are definitely besties. I love it. So set rules for yourself, like email boundaries, no email after a certain time of day or night off time boundaries. No work at all. On Saturdays. Schedule events, scheduling events like working out that are non-negotiable on your work calendar. If you have a shared calendar at work, just block the time is unavailable for work calls or meetings. What do you think, Rosie? I. Love all of it. It's not easy to remember to take regular breaks, including a proper lunch break or even making time for personal activities that you love, but it's so important to mentally step away from work and refresh your mind from a mindfulness perspective. A couple other methods that might help would be number one, designated workspace. Yes. Yes. I love a good designated workspace. Creating a specific workspace at home reinforces the mental boundary between work time and personal time. Love that. The second is disconnect disconnecting from communications during your personal time. This is a must. This might mean turning off email notifications or setting your status as unavailable or do not disturb during off work hours. This helps to ensure your personal time remains your own. Yes, yes, yes. There's so many ways to use technology to help reinforce your boundaries. Hey. Lins, I have a question for you. We've both been freelancers. Sometimes you've done everything right, but there's still something weighing on you getting in the way of that precious personal time. Any recommendations for what to do in that case? Yes, I've totally been there. Perhaps you've got work stress on your mind and it's distracting you from family or friend time. On the weekend, you can tell them, I'm really stressed about work. I'm going to go focus for one hour to get a few things done and then I can focus on you. When my daughter was young, this worked really well. I. Suppose the challenge there would be to not let it become a habit. Being mindful enough to recognize the difference between something you do during most of your personal time. Do I do this every weekend or every lunch as opposed to it's a busier time than usual, and this will truly help me clear up my head. Great. Call out Rosie. It's almost as if a mindfulness practice has the potential to help you in all areas of your life, virtually all of the time. I think you may be onto something there, Lindsay. Boundaries. We love you. Boundaries, boundaries....