What is the secret of a work-life balance?

Work is not just a way to make money, it serves one both financially and emotionally. A thriving professional life is what gives me satisfaction and inspiration on the personal front. Not every aspect of your work is exciting, but it needs to be healthy enough in a way that you don’t drag yourself to work every single day. In my profession, every task demands a new ‘me’ and that is what keeps me going. Alongside work, prioritising the needs of your personal life is equally vital in order to maintain a balance between work and personal life. With this, follows several positive effects, including less stress, a lower risk of burnout and a greater sense of well-being. Work-life balance is not just about bifurcating the hours in a day evenly between work and personal life. Instead, it is more about relishing the flexibility of getting things done at work while still having time and energy to enjoy a personal life. There will be days when you work for longer hours so you have time later in the week for other activities. Therefore, a healthy work-life balance is important to keep both aspects of life on track and perform tremendously.- Natasha Jain, CEO and co-founder, Bent Chair
 

Given the traditional way our society looks at women, they are expected to maintain both, their work as well as their family life, perfectly. With the emergence of more and more women as entrepreneurs and businesswomen, it is important to learn how so many women these days are handling their work and personal life so nicely. Work-life balance starts by not setting extraordinary goals for myself... I keep my targets whether it’s regarding my professional career or personal life whichever achievable without disturbing my mental peace. For me, the focus is to give my best as a professional, as a parent and as an individual..not to become perfect in whatever I do. I don’t overstress myself to prove that I am the best mother or the best professional. One has to learn to either stop or slow down the moment, ambition and desires are overpowering mental health and I personally try my best to abide by this so that I can enjoy myself, my work and my family all the time. Successful are those who do the same thing again and again with the same enthusiasm and energy and if you do not have a balance between your personal and professional life that energy dies down with time.- Diksha Chabbra, founder, Diksha Chabbra Fitness consultation

M y entrepreneurial journey has been really overwhelming with a family and a kid to care for back at home. When it comes to women entrepreneurs, there is always a question of priority in their life and it is always assumed that it’s difficult to manage both. The mantra I follow to keep up the work-life balance is to unplug myself from the certain things that can be managed without my attention be at home or office. It always gives a sense of responsibility and accountability to the other person. I always make sure to keep some time of the day for myself to plan and analyse the work in the direction of my goals. I believe in excelling at work through delegating the tasks to people as per their strengths which would not lead to good results but also done with all positive energies on time. To work with the team the key to motivating them is the self - motivation and letting go of perfection to a certain extent to keep up the spirits high.- Puja Punj, co-founder, GyFTR

Irealised that there is no silver bullet to achieve work-life balance and most importantly balance is not the right thing to strive especially in this ever-changing fast-paced world. Work-life balance is often draining both physically and emotionally and consumes a lot of energy. I have started practising ‘total leadership’, which is all about work-life ‘integration’ that is integrating the four important aspects of life: self, work, family and community.I know many of us who treat these domains separately, like four different boxes placed side-by-side and aim for the perfect balance between all of them which is near impossible. However, these domains are like concentric circles, where depending on the situation, each domain needs special attention without the stress of balancing the others.-Swathi Bavanaka, COO and co-founder, Prameya Health

Prioritising one’s work is the key to achieving work-life balance. Every morning, I create a mental note of key things/tasks that I have to get done that day. It could be important investor meetings, interviews with prospective candidates, internal discussions with the team, etc and then focus on getting that done before I wrap up. If you are a working professional who leads a busy life, it is hard to achieve everything on your wishlist every day. That leads to two scenarios: either we burn out and have no space/time for our personal lives or we become inefficient in our jobs due to non-prioritisation and don’t achieve the optimal result. Keeping a good watch on our lifestyle and our health, and in turn, the health of our family is critical. As founders, we tend to lead very stressful lives. That can soon culminate into ill health and depression. I ensure working out 5 days a week and taking short 2-3 day vacations every quarter to plug out of work. – Rashie Jain, CEO and co-founder,  Onco.com

For women to succeed in the competitive business landscape, it is imperative that we become comfortable giving equal weightage to our careers as we do to our other obligations, roles and responsibilities. And for that, we need to build a thick skin and a strong support system.  Until we do, we won’t be able to create the ecosystem required to support this challenging journey to the top of the corporate ladder. We will need to make sacrifices and compromises about being there for everyone all the time and having everything perfect. And we will need to stop feeling apologetic about it. Another important aspect is to reskill and upskill to be on par with industry requirements and standards. There are a plethora of opportunities, women just have to take the steps necessary to seize them.  – Neha Bagaria, founder, JobsforHer
 

First, define your priorities, enjoy what you do and work towards finding the right balance. Once you find this balance, the fulfilment and joy in work are unmatched. Also, it’s important to remember that when you are younger it is more difficult to find work-life balance and it will evolve as you grow in your career. But to sum it up, balance is not something you find it is something you create.– Dr Sandhya Ravi, founder, Prameya Health