Work / life balance can be a difficult thing for people to master. Not only business owners and employees, but devout students and parents all have potential to experience burnout. Too much time focused on work-related responsibilities can lead to dissatisfaction in your personal life. On the other hand, too much time spent on your personal hobbies can lead to a lackluster business. No matter what category you fit into, maintaining a healthy work / life balance is crucial.

As an award winning real estate agent, I take my business wherever I go. And if I’m not careful, it can consume the time I spend doing the things that I love. Whether I am travelling, in the gym, on the golf course, or spending time with my family, it is important to know the difference between work time and personal time. In a business as unpredictable as real estate, building some kind of routine can seriously help improve my work life and my personal life.

When I first started in real estate I had zero structure to my routine. Showing requests in the middle of a workout? I’ll finish my workout later. On the golf course with my friends and my phone rings? Sorry guys, let me take this really quick. I never knew where to draw the line and it became easy to let the present moment slip away.

Small changes in my daily routine allowed me to regain a lot of time for my hobbies and personal interests while also becoming more productive in my business. Evening and late afternoon workouts became 5:00am alarms and 6:00am workouts. Playing golf whenever I wanted became scheduled tee times and only after my work was completed, and most importantly time spent with my family was not to be taken for granted. When it’s time to work, I work, and when it’s time to focus on my personal life, I focus on my personal life. I no longer focused on the polarity between work life and personal life and instead, started focusing on a healthy balance of both.

My only exception is travel. Travelling is a great way to decompress from the day to day stress of work. At the end of February I had a 7-night vacation in Mexico where I spent the majority of my time relaxing and enjoying the beautiful environment of Cancun. However, I did spend a few hours of the trip working. The mindset shift that happened here was that even though I am on vacation, my clients are not. And their goals aren’t changing. This is where the balance is important. It would’ve been bad practice (in my opinion) to leave a client hanging for 7 days. It also would’ve been a terrible vacation if I had spent 8 hours a day working. By the end of the trip I had made so many new memories and had three real estate deals under contract. I was happy, my clients were happy, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Whether you are a business owner, employee, student, or parent, you have the ability to take full control of what you spend your time doing. I’ve learned first hand that a person’s work / life balance can be the reason that their business thrives or just as easily be the reason that their business suffers. The late night phone call can wait on you to finish dinner with your family. That email you got 5 minutes ago can wait on you to finish the chapter you’re reading. The work text message you just got can wait until your date night is over. Practice appreciating and being in the present moment and experience the increased quality of your personal and professional lives.