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How do you achieve that perfect work-life balance? You don’t.

I used to be in this constant chase for the perfect work-life balance between my work, my kids, quality family time, keeping on top of chores, doing all the life admin, and just everything life throws my way.

But there’s no such thing as the perfect balance. Still, there are a few tiny habits I’ve incorporated into my life that help me achieve a better life balance. Not perfect by any means, but it just works better for me and for us as a family. It’s also helped me be more calm and intentional with my time. 

Keep reading below or watch the video:

1. Accept that the perfect work-life balance doesn’t exist. 

I used to constantly feel like I just needed to find the right schedule or the right organisational system for our family to have the perfect balance—and that’s just not possible.

The book “The One Thing” mentions how there’s no such thing as the perfect work/life balance. We will always lean towards one or the other at different points in time. It’s very likely that our lives will look a lot more like a zigzag than a perfect straight line. 

So I do have days when I focus more on work. And days when I focus more on the kids and our family. Putting myself down and feeling guilty about it is not helpful at all.

We are all trying our best, and I think especially as parents, we do so much in a day. If we sat down and list all the things we do in a day, we would be surprised at how much we actually accomplish and all the little things we do for ourselves, our family, our kids, and our jobs. We just pour so much of ourselves in a day. 

“The One Thing” book also mentions how the term “work-life balance” wasn’t actually even coined until the mid-1980s. That’s when more than half of all married women joined the workforce. So as a society, we used to have the man be the breadwinner, and the woman would be at home, taking care of the household and the children. 

Then we went from this to having women join the workforce. And especially in the early days, even though there were two breadwinners in the household, who got to do the housework and childcare? Usually, still the women. 

Obviously, things are changing now. There are many men getting involved in raising the children and taking care of the household, as that’s where the whole family is living anyway.

What we’re also trying to do, and to instil in our children, is the understanding that everyone needs to contribute to the household. Everybody does their little bit, obviously according to their age. But we all work together to keep this space a nice one to live in.

So if there’s one thing I took from Keller and Papasan’s book, is that there is no perfect balance, and it’s really important to be kind to ourselves. We only have so many hours in our day, and we’re trying to do so much. We’re trying our best to balance things as best we can. So it’s important to give ourselves grace and to realise that actually, we’re doing a lot. And I’m willing to bet today you’re going to do a lot more than you think.

2. Slow down.

I’ve been working on making this more of a habit—to slow down in my days. And when I’m doing something, like filming a video for my YouTube channel, I don’t want to be super rushed, get it done, check it off my list, and move on to the next thing. I’m trying my best to just slow down and enjoy the process, because I do enjoy filming videos. I don’t enjoy doing them rushed, but I do enjoy sitting down and chatting to my community. 

One other thing I’ve been enjoying doing is slowing down when I’m cooking, or even trying a bit more baking. Taking the time to focus on these activities has been such a nice way to relax and enjoy the process.

So I’m really trying to focus on what I love to do and slow down on my daily tasks.

3. Balance clutter and kids.

This is one thing that I used to tell myself: I’m a mom, I have kids, my house is just going to be a complete disaster. It’s completely normal to have tons and tons of toys thrown around everywhere. 

And yes, there is a certain truth to that. My kids will play, and there will be toys on the floor. That is the daily layer of messiness, the daily layer of things they take out and play with. But the clutter that was beneath that—all of the random stuff, the random piles, the things stuffed in cupboards—that was not my kids, that was us.

What I have found in trying to maintain a clutter-free household, even with kids around and while wanting to keep them entertained, is that I just really needed to do a big declutter and to get rid of all that underlying layer of clutter. That was not my kids’ doing. That was piles of clothes, knick-knacks and home decor items I had excessively bought. And yes, some of the toys as well.

But for me, it was really important to accept that even with kids around, I still have a say in the state of our home. I can still control things. My house is not going to be as perfectly tidy or clean compared to someone who doesn’t have kids. But getting rid of the clutter was something I did that massively improved our life.

Through this, I also found that, actually, kids need a lot less than we think they do. They play so much more sometimes with a simple box than with all the other toys they have.

I still remember last year, I was at a soft play with my baby, chatting with a mom. Her little boy was linked to a big toy walker. And she was saying, “I have the exact same toy at home, and he ignores it, but whenever we come to this soft play, he always plays with it.”

That story, for me, was just a good reminder that even though sometimes we try to fill our homes with lots of toys to keep our kids entertained—and that’s what I used to do too—they’re not going to play with them on their own for hours and hours at home. Even if on the toy’s box it says “hours of fun,” they usually still need us. They still need our company, and for us to play with them. They also need to get creative and spend time outdoors. And I have found that actually having fewer toys is a lot more helpful.

4. Track your hours.

Something that’s been helpful is the 24-hour rule, though it doesn’t have to be 24 hours. You can do it over multiple days, which is what I have done. But the idea is, for 24 hours, every hour, write whatever you do in that hour.

That’s what I did. I wrote down the time we woke up in the morning, when kids’ had breakfast, when we took them to school and nursery, when I came home to film my video, had lunch, when I was scrolling on Instagram aimlessly—”Oh, I’ll just go on there to post my Instagram Reel,” ending up scrolling for another hour.

Through doing this, I wanted to optimise my schedule and find pockets of time. I wanted to see where in the day I can squeeze in some tasks, like admin tasks or answering emails. So instead of scrolling Instagram, I can get some work done or do the little tasks that I want to get done in a day.

It doesn’t mean we have to be productive 24/7. This can also help us find pockets of time to schedule in a running session, which I like to do, or read a book. 

I used to always say, “Oh, I just don’t have time for that.” But when I looked at my schedule, actually, I could find time for a lot of the little things that I want to do—not every day, but just being more intentional with my time. At the end of the day, time is the most precious thing we have.

5. Make it fun. 

This is something I learned in the “Feel-Good Productivity” book by Ali Abdaal. If you don’t know, he’s the productivity go-to expert. And one thing that really stuck with me from his book is that we have a lot of tasks we need to do in our day that we procrastinate, and then we put ourselves down for that.

But the truth is, we don’t always need just more motivation to get tasks done. What is also really helpful is to find ways to make them fun. Find ways to make them attractive. This way, tasks become a more enjoyable experience, rather than something we kind of have to drag ourselves to do.

For example, I’m trying to make my work more fun. So when I’m editing a video, sometimes I will put something in the background, be it Grey’s Anatomy or Friends. Not that I’m actually actively watching, but it makes the experience more fun. 

I try to do the same with decluttering by putting some music in the background. Or sometimes I reward myself at the end, just to make the experience more fun. This way, I’m more likely to do it again in the future, and it can more easily turn into a habit that improves my life over time.

6. Track your sleep. 

This is something I’ve been doing using my Fitbit, even though I don’t wear it every single night for sleep. Yet it has really helped me go from shocking sleep to decent sleep. 

Now we’re out of the newborn phase, which often comes with incredibly broken sleep, and we’re into the toddler years. Though it’s not like our toddler sleeps perfectly every single night — it’s still unpredictable. And there are a lot of things I can’t control about my sleep, like how many times my kids wake up overnight, what time they wake up in the morning, or if they’re teething.

But there are other things I can change and move around. And one thing I can control to ensure that I have a better night’s sleep—not a perfect one, but just better—is the time that I go to bed.

The later I go to bed, the more tired I’m going to be the next day—because my kids will still wake up at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. So the earlier I go to sleep, the better I will feel the next day. I will have more energy for my kids, my business, my work, and everything I want to do in my day. Plus it will just put me in a better mood—because trust me, I get grumpy when I’m sleep deprived.

So tracking my sleep has really helped me realise that if I go to bed at 11:00, it’s way too late. I’m only going to get maybe 6 hours of sleep. And this might sound really early, but I try to go upstairs to bed at around 9:00. It takes me a while to actually fall asleep. But the earlier I start the process by going to bed, the earlier I actually fall asleep, and the better I feel the next day.

Tracking your sleep might sound like a small thing, but can be really helpful.

7. Incorporate some form of daily exercise. 

I used to view exercise as something really annoying that I just had to do. Then I realised — actually, I can simply go and choose the things I do enjoy doing and just add more of those to my day.

I don’t have to go training at the gym if I don’t want to. Nor do I have to do intense workouts if that’s not for me. But I love a walk. So what we try to do is to walk for the school run rather than always take the car. And even if I sometimes take the car, I still try to make sure that at least once a day I go out for a walk as well.

A few years ago, I discovered that I actually really enjoy running, so I’ve been doing a lot more of that. That’s something I’ve added to my week. And sometimes I’ll just do a quick morning workout in the living room before we start our day, depending on the time my kids wake up.

Finding movement you enjoy makes all the difference. It turns exercise from a chore into something you actually look forward to.

Let me know what habits you’ve tried that help you with your life balance, I love hearing from you.