Work creeping into every corner of your life? Learn practical strategies to create clear boundaries between work and home. By Angela Tufvesson
You’re working from your van, papers are piling up on your kitchen table and you’re taking calls during breakfast. Before you know it, work has infiltrated the rest of your life. When you run a tradie business, especially if you’re a sole trader or employ a few people, the line between professional responsibilities and your personal life can easily blur.
“A key challenge facing business owners in the trades is being able to balance your personal life and your business. Many people go all in on the business and find it difficult to achieve a balance between the two,” says Paul Rogers, head coach and founder of Tradie Coach, explaining that physical and mental wellbeing and family relationships can easily slip when the business comes first. That’s why finding a sustainable balance isn’t just a ‘that-would-be-nice’ aspiration—it’s essential. The good news is, with a few practical shifts, it’s possible to reclaim time, energy and a bit of headspace outside your small business.
SET ASIDE PERSONAL TIME
When there’s so much to do, it can feel like the only solution is to put in even more time. “Business owners often think that the number of hours they’re doing is directly correlated to how hard they’re working,” Rogers says. “So you do more and more hours, starting really early in the morning and not getting back until late at night.”
Instead, it’s more effective to structure your day around when you’re naturally most productive, he says. If you’re a morning person, schedule client meetings and planning for new jobs before lunchtime and leave more routine tasks for the afternoon. Where possible, factor this into when you go out onsite or tackle hands-on work so you’re using your peak energy for the tasks that matter most. The beauty of this approach is that more gets done in fewer hours, making it easier to carve out what Rogers calls “the sacred hours”—clearly defined time away from work to spend with family, go for a run, catch up with a mate, or simply relax and recharge.
He says it’s crucial to put your phone on silent when you get home and be fully present. “How I look at it is that you wouldn’t organise a meeting with a client and then take phone calls within that meeting or do computer work. So why do it with your partner or a mate?”
STREAMLINE YOUR WEEK
Streamlining how you work can also help to prevent calls, site dramas and scheduling mix-ups from sneaking into your personal time. Miles Primrose, founder of the G.O.A.T. Tradie app, which offers business tools and training, recommends using an hour or so on a Sunday afternoon to plan for the week ahead.
“People might say they don’t know what’s going to happen with the builder or the client that week and that they might change things. I understand that, but the more structured and planned your week is, the better it’s going to be,” explains Primrose, who has more than 25 years’ experience coaching tradie business owners.
He says communicating via text rather than phone also helps to reduce interruptions and maintain clearer boundaries between work and non-work throughout the week. “It also helps to eliminate ‘he said, she said’ arguments because you’ve got everything in writing,” Primrose adds.
DELEGATE WITH CONFIDENCE
Delegating can be tricky, especially for new business owners, but doing so well can free up more personal time and keep the business ticking along.
Rogers recommends automating tasks like invoicing and follow-ups with technology. For businesses with staff, spreading responsibilities across a team helps to ease pressure on the boss.
“If you’ve got team leaders who can make decisions on your behalf, whether it’s small client requests or minor operational hiccups that don’t need the business owner, empower them to do so,” Rogers advises. “Get really clear on the types of activities that should and shouldn’t be brought to the business owner.”
Primrose agrees, suggesting that this approach is also effective for businesses in the initial stages of expansion. “When you’ve brought your first apprentice or qualified person on board, have a couple of nights a week where you switch any emergency calls to them, so that you can get some time with your partner or family.”
Greater focus on work-life balance might even serve as an impetus to occasionally hire a subbie or take on more staff . “Once you’ve designed how your personal life is going to work, you might realise you’ve only got about 25 hours each week to actually work on the tools and you need to bring someone else on,” Primrose says.
Ultimately, he continues, to grow a successful, sustainable business “you need to look after number one. You’re creating your personal life first, not your work life.”
Photography: Auremar – 123RF
