Print Shop Management Tips for Balancing Print Shop and Home Life
Owning a print shop business is a huge responsibility and can be take up much of your time. Of course, all of this responsibility and time can pay off very well for you and your family in terms of financial gain. However, many business owners fall into the trap of working too much that it robs them from spending valuable time with their families. Learning to balance work and home is often a challenge to many business owners.
Missing dinners, missing children's school events or after school activities, not making time for dates with your spouse, no vacations, constantly eating take out, not exercising, nor barely making it home in time to say good night to your children are some common signs that your work and home life are not balanced well. If you can relate to these, then know that you are not alone. There are so many people that find it challenging to discover balance and then also challenging to maintain it.
It seems to be that one of the reasons that print shop work life and home life are not easy to balance is because shop owners and even shop management believe they can not give fully to both. However, here are some tips that can help you do so:
Being completely engaged while at work. With Facebook, Instagram, friends calling, long lunch breaks, and other subtle distractions that commonly happen to every one of us, we lose focus on what we are doing. Sure as business owners, you have the luxury to dilly dally and pause often from work. However, those pauses add up and take away time that can never be brought back. When you are completely engaged while at work, you will notice that more will get accomplished and the workday will be over earlier. Suggestion: Check your personal social media once during the workday. If you have your business on social media, set alerts so that you can be notified whenever someone reaches out.
Leave work at work. I have seen it over and over again. The business owner comes home from work and talks and talks and talks and talks about work. Yes, I meant to include all of those extra “and talks”. It is totally consuming him or her. Of course, talking about work at home is healthy, but too much every day can be tiring. Families need to connect with each other regularly to maintain healthy relationships. Discover new things to do together. When families are better connected, everything in the household seems to run better and there is much more contentment. It is understandable that you may need to check up on work emails once in a while, but not constantly. Suggestion: Set a specific time when you check in on work. Resist the urge to check more.
Value the time you are with your family. It is so easy to get lost in TV or to go online reading the latest news, drooling over the newest smartphone or tablet apps, browsing through shoes or laughing at posts on Facebook. When at home, learn to enjoy one another. Play games, chat, exercise together, go for a walk, do a puzzle, cook together or be creative with some other ideas. When you are truly enjoying your family, work feels so much lighter. Suggestion: Look for something new to discover with your family. Over time, we need something to spice up our relationships. Something new can do that.
When at work, seek small ways to connect with your family. Texting a new window graphic that you just completed to your kids and to your partner gets them involved just enough. Share with them how proud you are of your work and let them see it. As a little bonus, this can help children build up pride in their own work. Suggestion: Text your family at least once weekly with a cool new project that your print shop created. Don’t overdo it with one every single day—unless they would like that.
Work smarter. Working smarter is probably one of the most important steps in maintaining this balance. Being organized is huge. Having a great managing system greatly saves so much time and energy. Since this is a shopVOX blog, this is the time for us to pass on how shopVOX allows print shop owners, managers and other employees to work smarter which will in turn allows much more time for your home life. shopVOX enables your staff to work smarter by being more organized, collaborating better, and managing every step of a project from sales lead to invoicing. Suggestion: To learn how shopVOX can help you work smarter so you have more time for your family, sign up for a trial of the best print shop management software available.
Will you ever balance your life perfectly? Few people do and that is okay. It’s important to do the best you can and not to get too stressed out trying to maintain this balance. Find what works best for you and make sure that you check out shopVOX. So, how about you? What have you tried to help balance your business and home life? Please share in the comments below.