How to Set Phone Hours for Busy Entrepreneurs

Setting Phone hours can help both you and your family feel less anxious and work feel more manageable like it’s not taking over your whole life!

Transcript

Today’s topic is work-life balance for very busy entrepreneurial moms.

I’m just going to say that this is really really difficult. Perhaps you’re a mom that runs a company, perhaps you work from home, perhaps you have an office or you’re entrepreneurial in some way or you’re a leader in your company and you’re finding that this is just not happening. Work-life balance is just sort of out the window and I totally get that. It is so so hard to create.

There was a time in my life when I was running into companies and my kids were complaining that I was on the phone all the time. To them, it felt like I was taking phone calls all day every day, so what I decided to do is track it. I said “Okay look, I’ll track my phone calls. I’ll track how long I’m on the phone.” and it turned out to be an average of about 10 to 15 minutes a day.

That is like not a lot of time but that’s nothing compared to what it felt like to them, but what we did is we made this compromise. At the time I was reading Tim Ferris’ The 4-Hour Workweek and so that was influencing me (great book) and I said I’ll establish phone hours so that my kids didn’t feel like they had to be on the ball all the time I get any moment I could turn to them and be like “Shhh! Hello this is Elizabeth”, they were already trained about how to stay quiet when I was on a business call so they felt like they had to be on at any moment that could happen so I said, I will have business phone hours instead and this changed the whole tenor of our family in our home life, I have to say and it is a way to create some work/life balance.

So, I created this lengthy voicemail longer than typical that gave people the hours that I typically answer calls. I also have an autoresponder on my email system that gave the same information that said “I typically return calls Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 2 to 5” or you know whatever that was whatever works for you and that way, my kids knew “Okay, these are phone hours and Mom might have to answer the phone” or “No, this isn’t the time”. You can just relax, you don’t have to worry about that now. Occasionally yes, a phone call comes through and you have to pick it up but in general, it is so much healthier and better and feels better if you can just create that time that “No, Mom’s not answering calls right now”

So that’s my tip!

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Peace and Health,
Dr. Liz