How to balance career and family?

Reconsider the priorities of things.

Fantasy: We can achieve our career goals and family goals in different periods of life.

Reality: Career and family goals cannot be neglected, but must be accomplished at the same time. If we sacrifice our career goals to achieve our family goals, then we will be out of balance. Similarly, if we only focus on our career and ignore our family, we will lose our balance. Sometimes, you may feel that you have to choose between a successful career and a family life. But extensive surveys show that you can do these two things at the same time without giving up two things with equal priority. The first step here is to establish a belief that if you want to have a successful career and a happy family, you can achieve these two goals within the same time frame. Don't delay one of them in order to achieve another goal, and sacrifice its reasonable time.

You must think carefully about what you value and what you want. In the process of seeking and maintaining the balance between career and family life, you must take the initiative to take responsibility.

Being a successful person requires devotion to his career, which makes it particularly challenging to keep a balance between career and family life. Career success means attaching many other requirements, which often complicates life. For example, successful people need to consider employees, customers and suppliers, and their demands will increase their pressure; At the same time, they may need to attend more meetings, travel more, negotiate more, and face more contradictions, so the time left for their families will be reduced accordingly.

Despite the above requirements, success should be an asset, not a liability, which plays a positive role in maintaining the balance between career and family. This is because, for many people, the greatest value of success is that it gives us the opportunity to exercise leadership, thus helping us realize ourselves.

The challenge of exercising leadership requires us to determine the balance we seek. Those qualities and skills needed to get rich returns in career are also necessary for developing stable family relationships, and vice versa.

Balance is a process of constantly adapting to change. In this process, we strive to keep the two most important things in life-family and career in harmony. Because constant changes have an impact on our lives, only by paying attention to persistent efforts can we maintain this balance. Therefore, we say that balance is a process, not a state.

The balance is not even. Balancing doesn't mean dividing energy or time between career and family. Some people feel that it is balanced to devote 60% of their energy to work and 40% to family life, while others may choose to devote more attention to family. In this regard, you can follow the steps listed here and make your own choice. Step two:

The process of pursuing and creating balance

Fantasy: Balance will come true automatically.

Reality: We should actively take responsibility and seek a balance between work and life. Don't wait for others to bring you a work-life balance. Zhan Sen said: "I have always believed that the balance between work and life can be achieved without hard work. I will adjust my schedule at will as long as necessary. Later, I realized that if I don't actively seek a harmonious balance between work and family life, work will dominate my life, especially for people like me who love competition and pursue sensational results. "

Zhan Sen made a common mistake. When prioritizing events, he thinks that the balance between career and life is natural. In fact, this is one of the most serious mistakes we can make. Achieving balance depends on the pursuit of this process, which includes determining the priority of events, realizing forward-looking expectations, delineating the boundaries of action and formulating internal standards. The bottom line here is that you should use your own point of view to explain what is career and family success.

First of all, we should face up to such a simple reality that the balance between career and life will not drop out of thin air, but we must operate on our own.

At the same time, we should set the boundaries between work and life as soon as possible. Work can be like water, filling the space you give it. This means that you must set boundaries and limit the space that your work can occupy.

One way to set boundaries is to set the priority of events. We need to know what is the most important and what we have to give up. In the process of choosing, we should consider it from the perspective of career and family.

There is no need to be swayed by considerations of gain and loss. We must make important choices about what we really want in life and stick to them for at least a while.

Finally, define success according to your own conditions. With the growth of personal wealth, our concept of "how much money is enough" may change constantly. The more people we associate with who are richer than us, the more inclined we are to think that what we have and what we are in are far from enough. With the promotion of career, leaders will especially fall into this strange circle of comparison.

Define success according to your own conditions, and refer to internal standards-your self-feeling, your family's self-feeling, your contribution to others, your self-growth, etc. Stop using external standards-others' success, income, status, wealth, assets or benefits. Step 3:

Make a choice without regret

Fantasy: We can make up for what we put aside in the future.

Reality: impossible. We can't repair it. If we stick to our career and miss the growth of our children at the expense of our families, we can't turn back the clock. On the contrary, if we neglect our career in order to support our families, it is basically difficult for us to return to the original career track, and we will lose the opportunity to achieve our career goals. Now you need to make hard choices, because balance is achieved by giving up what you don't want so much. The art of balancing career and family lies in minimizing compromise, which will make us do better in both aspects.

How do we do this? The way is to put aside some things that seem important to us, but they are not, including those that are well done but not done, and those meaningless activities, which can't make you refreshed and do more important things with a better mental state. These things should take a back seat (or even fade out completely, if they are really insignificant in our lives).

At Harvard University, we are often surprised to see that many people, after years of hard work, find that successfully completing their chosen courses is more important than many other things in life. In fact, many people realize that who, where and what to do should be the first thing in their lives.

As leaders, we tend to take on more responsibilities than we can bear. Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate skills and say "no" to some responsibilities beyond the scope of duties. A small commitment may crowd out some of the most important things in our lives. If you like new cars, your plan to buy a new house may be ruined. If you want to have another child, a new job may be ruined. If you want a new job, you may have to give up further study.

Give up what you don't want urgently, and you don't have to have any regrets when you decide to give up. The secret of a happy life lies in the necessary choices, and we don't have to regret those things that we can't perfect. Step 4:

choose one

A balanced career

Fantasy: You can take time out, choose any job or occupation you like best, and enjoy family life, regardless of family factors.

Reality: We must choose our jobs and occupations carefully to ensure that the nature of our jobs allows us enough time to take care of our families. If you want to find a balance between career and family, you need to choose a career. Some occupations are more conducive to achieving the balance between family and career than others. For example, investment banking (due to long working hours) or consulting (due to frequent business trips) makes it difficult to balance career and family.

If you have been in an industry for a long time and it is difficult to change your course, you have three basic choices:

Scheme 1: Continue the present work. But this may mean that you must actively change the company culture, not passively, so that it can support your need to balance your career and family.

Option 2: internal transfer of the company. If you like your company and can't change the current workplace culture, try to transfer within the company, and you may find that the new position is more suitable for you.

Option 3: Leave. If all else fails, leave. Looking for a new job or position can give you time and space to pursue what you want most in your career and family life. Capable professionals always have a choice.

If you choose the scheme 1, you can expand and maintain the space you need to balance your career and family in the following ways:

The experiment should be creative. Jane gained more flexible working hours by persuading her boss. She proved that more flexible work arrangements are beneficial to her work, and her work efficiency is higher, and she has a better impression on customers and employees.

It is necessary to develop an irreplaceable housekeeping skill, become the only person in the enterprise or company customers who has mastered the key elements, and have skills that others lack. Efforts will only make the company feel that you are valuable, not irreplaceable.

Trust and empower leaders to know themselves and frankly admit that some people are better than themselves in some aspects, thus empowering them. Authorization requires courage and trust, but it is worth doing in the long run.

To relieve stress, we should be organized and plan ahead for possible problems. We should prioritize our work and do the most important thing first. When dealing with something particularly urgent for you, you might as well guide others to finish it. For example, Jenny realized that she really took on too many responsibilities, so she entrusted her original project to others. Of course, this is not so easy for her, because she once boasted that her work attitude can accept any challenge. But Jenny realized that as a leader, to balance her career and family, she couldn't do everything by herself.

Defending weekend time should convince people that the reduction of working hours does not necessarily mean the reduction of work output. We should guide the company culture so that everyone supports the balance between work and family.

When you have completed the above four steps, there are two more to do. This is:

Let the people you love work with you to create a balance between career and family.

It is difficult to balance career and family on your own. If you mobilize your main family members and work partners to improve your balanced plan, you will have a greater chance of success.

It is necessary to understand the expectations and priorities of each family member and help everyone achieve a balance. It is very important that both husband and wife can take care of their careers and families.

Look at your balance and decide whether to keep it or regain it.

Your balance may be broken, so it is necessary to check your balance regularly. Those events that may upset the balance are: accidents, diseases or the death of family members; Your company merges with other companies, layoffs or goes bankrupt.

Other events also make you stumble out of balance: the relationship between partners loses romance; Loss of market for products or services; The profitability of the company is not good; Indulge in a hobby too much. When you realize that there are any of the above problems, you have to decide what adjustments must be made.

In case you lose your balance, you should have a plan to restore it.

Remember: this process can help you achieve your goals and balance your career and family life.