Enhance Your Work Life Control: Be Happy, Choose Your Responsibilities & Make Time for Yourself
This is the last in a series of seven blog posts featuring advice on our Seven Strategies for Flex Success®. Review the first six steps to remind yourself how you get to Step 7 and to help ensure your success while working flexibly:
- Define Your Success;
- Own Your Value;
- Activate Your Mindset;
- Create a Strong Personal Brand;
- Build Your Networks;
- Expand Your Business Development;
- Enhance your work-life control.
The first six strategies in our Seven Strategies for Flex Success® focus on getting your day to day flexible schedule in order to set yourself up for success in your career. It’s essential to acknowledge that this is not possible unless you can also find success and happiness outside of your career.
When launching a project at the office there are certain steps you take to ensure all responsibilities are assigned and all goals will be met. You negotiate and decide to which responsibilities you can add high impact and high value and which responsibilities you can delegate to others. You clearly articulate what is expected of your team and you make sure that your commitments are met. Ultimately you know that you can’t and shouldn’t do it all alone.
The same applies to your home life. If you are a parent, you undoubtedly need a team to assist you in your parenting responsibilities. Whether that assistance comes from a spouse, a babysitter, a grandparent, a carpool driver or some other helper, you can’t do it all now and you can’t do it all alone. It is essential that you determine which responsibilities enable you to have the biggest impact on your family and your own happiness, and which can be delegated or left until another day.
Even if you don’t have a family, you may need to consider delegating errands, cleaning and other chores, to make time for work, education or other priorities in your life. Having a plan and having control over your goals and your responsibilities enables you to find that work life balance that you will cherish.
Additionally, it’s important to find time in your schedule to devote purely to yourself and your interests outside of the office. You will be much more successful in all areas of your life if you are content. These activities will need to be scheduled as if you would schedule an important meeting, to ensure that they are not overlooked. As one professional working a flexible schedule told us, “Having obligations and interests outside of work has made me a more balanced person, and more importantly, it has forced me to be strategic about what I choose to take on.” “Working flex allows me to be a happier, more efficient lawyer and be the kind of parent I want to be,” a flex attorney concurred.
Contact us for more information on the Alliance’s Seven Strategies for Flex Success® and for more information on how we can help you achieve Flex Success® in your career.
