If you think work-life balance is hogwash, think of it like this. Being successful in ecommerce gives you the drive to accomplish your personal goals while taking care of your physical and mental health allows you to approach ecommerce with full force. RepricerExpress has nine ways you can rule the roost in both areas.
1. Firmly Separate Each Section of Your Life
Or in other words, don’t bring your work home with you and leave your personal life out of work. Each area of your life should have firmly set boundaries. This makes it easier to identify good and bad areas in each and fix them as necessary. And when you set these boundaries, be firm in following through on them with clients and customers, and respect theirs in turn.
2. Focus on Each Task 100%
If you’re responding to questions, respond only to questions. If you’re writing product descriptions, don’t have distractions in the background. And if you’re with family or friends, put the phone away and focus your attention on them. To get the best out of each world, you’ll have to give each area 100% of your undivided attention.
3. Have Something to Look Forward to Outside of Work
Taking up a hobby, no matter what it is, helps you unwind from the stresses of work. It can be something high-powered, like cycling or swimming, or something more low-key, like playing a musical instrument or knitting. The point is to have a hobby that helps you disengage from work where you don’t use your work equipment.
4. Schedule in Breaks
A popular approach for working efficiently is the Pomodoro technique where you set a timer to work for 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break. After you’ve completed four Pomodoros (i.e. two hours), you’ve earned a longer break of 15 minutes to half an hour. This trains your brain to identify how long a task will take, to focus its energy on completing it, and on not feeling overwhelmed by a day’s worth of tasks. During those breaks, you’re free to do whatever you want but once the timer dings again, it’s time to get back to work.
5. Learn How to Delegate Tasks
One of the biggest reasons behind feeling stressed out from work is not asking for help. Nobody can do it all, nor should they attempt to. If you’re feeling frazzled and like everything is snowballing into a gigantic mess, then reach out to your employees and reassign tasks. Just make sure you’re accurately identifying the reasons for your stress and not overloading your workers unjustly.
6. Automate the Tasks That Can’t Be Delegated
There are so many things you can be automated to make your day go smoother, especially in this digital age. But first, use track your time and work for an entire work to see where everything goes. And from there, make a decision on what to automate. Hint: things like product cataloguing, pricing, reviews, task tracking and more are just about made for automation.
7. Find a Partner for Motivation and Accountability
You know how they say if you want to get in shape, find a friend to get in shape with you? That’s because you’re far less likely to back out if you know someone else is depending on you (as well as it’s easier to do something you don’t like if a person is cheering you on). Seek out someone in a similar position as you (i.e. you both have similar demands on your day) and hold each other to account for mutual benefit, and check in regularly to see that both of you are getting that work-life balance in ecommerce.
8. Try Phasing in an Alarm Clock into Your Life
Phones have become so ubiquitous, it’s hard to disentangle ourselves from them. But try in small steps. Instead of setting your phone’s alarm to wake you up in the morning, use an actual alarm clock — and if it’s possible, try to minimize sleeping with your phone. This accomplishes two things: you’re not as tempted to check notifications if your phone isn’t right by your head, and you don’t have to worry about your phone shutting off and your alarm not sounding in the morning.
9. Reward Yourself for Your Achievements
We know this sounds cheesy, but it’s so important to self-recognise all the hard work you’ve put in and give yourself a pat on the back. Celebrate the successes you’ve had, and include those involved in the successes in the celebration. Have a pizza night at the office. Go see a movie during the week. Or take a whole day off and reinvest that time in your family and friends.
Final Thoughts
In the sixth tip, we briefly mentioned pricing as one of the tasks you should be automating. There’s really no good reason why you need to be doing the whole pricing/repricing process manually, especially with RepricerExpress out there. Use the software to set up rules, then use your experience as a seller to monitor the smaller dynamic changes. Sign up now and start the first 15 days entirely free.
