A host of factors, developments, and dynamics have made most industries more competitive than ever. As a result so many of us wonder whether there is still such a thing as work-life balance. We reached out to the community to hear perspectives on finding the right balance.

Chelsea Martin | Luxury Travel Advisor

To be honest when I first started in my career, I was a complete workaholic. It did not help that I lived alone and worked from home, because I would start working at 6am and keep working until midnight. This however built unhealthy habits and started to affect my health, so nearly 2 years ago I made a promise to start prioritizing myself. I still have days where I work 15 hours, but when I do that I make sure to give myself more “me” time later that week. I personally think you cannot be the best version of yourself in your work if you don’t take time for yourself. Read more>>

Roger Ma | Entrepreneur & Small Business Owner

Balance is one thing that business owners and entrepreneurs tend to have trouble juggling. But I see balance as subjective as each person’s perception of balance can vary significantly. My work life balance in the last decade or so was pretty predictable on a day to day basis as but as I started expanding into new projects and scaling into different sales channels, that put everything into a vacuum and each day can turn out differently. I went from working a set amount of hours per day and having a solid social life for a short while but things got a bit stagnant with the business (I tend to get bored when things are too predictable) so I decided to expand and scale things up a bit. After spurring some growth throughout these last few years, we continue to try new things and shift our focus into newer aspects. Read more>>

Mary Smylie | Realtor

Work life balance is my #1 priority!!! I wake up each and every day with a million and ten things to do and I know I only have 24 hours in the day. I’m a notorious list maker and have several lists going on concurrently, constantly re-shuffling priorities. Always working to take care of what’s most important. Sometimes its work related, other times it’s the kids, my friends and family and more often than not, it’s myself. That wasn’t always the case. After over a decade working in corporate retail, as a buyer and inventory planner for large well known national corporations. I spent my twenties working ridiculous numbers of hours each and every day. But I didn’t mind it, I was young and eager to learn and I loved what I did. It was fun, it was exciting!!!! Granted my priorities were different then. I didn’t really workout that much and my free time was centered on my social life and happy hours. Read more>>

Juan Martinez | Community Builder

Acceptance. As a father, husband, engineer, photographer, doing the business development and marketing behind Beers And Cameras and the parent company, owned by my wife, I’ve learned you must accept that you can’t do it all, all the time, every single day. One needs to choose the most important things to knock-out that day and get those completed or at the very least started. Time management has personally been my biggest struggle. I have tried something that works for me; partitioning one’s day. For example, scheduling 1 hour in the morning for emails, then 2 hours mid-afternoon for product shoots, followed by a straight 1 and a half hours for planning next days social media posts and upcoming events in the late evening you won’t feel as though you are falling behind overall while still leaving plenty of time for family and perhaps your main career; assuming the business is a side-hustle. Read more>>

Michelle lillywhite | Wedding Photographer and Family Photographer

I’ve always been a person who prioritizes my family and my own mental wellbeing over my work, so my work has always come third. I realize that I cannot love and serve my clients well when my own cup is not full. Every year I try to reevaluate how I am booking out my year to make sure that my workload is sustainable but also joyful. It’s so easy to get caught up in the idea that you have to book more in order to be more successful. I’ve learned that with the right pricing strategy and budgeting, you can live a life you love while and feel fulfilled and satisfied with your workload. Over time, I’ve increased my prices and this has enabled me to invest in client systems and myself. Read more>>