The term ‘work-life balance’ gets bandied about so much nowadays. We’re not big fans of the term and believe it’s more about ‘integrating’ work and life. What that means is that you can basically take full control of your day (from work, to eating meals, exercising, spending time with your family, whatever)… In line with Mental Health awareness month here are a five steps to take today to be more productive in your business and ultimately less stressed.

Feeling overwhelmed? These five tips will help you take control and be more productive in your business.

1. Work remotely

Sure, it is the ‘new norm’ but we’ve been doing it for years. By choice. It saves commuting time, cuts ‘traffic’ stress and means (if done correctly) you can work on your own time. We know that for remote working to function throughout the organisation, one needs to understand what cultures are required and implement those from top management all the way to the bottom. ‘Middle management’ is something of a superfluous term in the remote organogram. Remote working is not about appointing a middle manager in the business and relying on them to make sure the ‘working’ happens. The most senior person in the organisation has to buy into the culture and functionality. They have to believe it, live and breathe it and only then will the right kind of culture flow through the rest of the business. Read more about just how to do it effectively, here

2. Let technology work for you

The reality is that it’s not always easy to work remotely (from a business owner’s perspective). How do you ensure accountability, check that people do what they are meant to do and track that employees put in the hours required? We make use of highly intuitive apps such as Asana to track projects and to collaborate – we have a whole ecosystem in the cloud. We’ve learned that remote-working employees need clear structure (in terms of required tasks and outcomes) to ensure they can create their own routines and manage deliverables. This goes a long way to negating unnecessary work anxiety or misunderstandings in terms of priority lists.

Learn more about our Cloud-based platform, here. 

3. Outsource

Play to your strengths… You (and your staff) need to focus on what you are good at in your business and outsource the things that take unnecessary time and cause unnecessary stress. The relatively small costs will reap you big benefits. Things as diverse as accounting and social media management – leave those to the experts while you concentrate on doing what you do. Good accounting practice is crucial and things such as social media marketing strategy requires long-term planning, good copywriting and succinct storytelling.

4. Exercise

5. Turn of your phone