Women Business Owners: Helping Others, Helping Ourselves

Over the past few years as a business owner, I've had the pleasure to get to know many other women business owners. No matter where I go, I find their stories are often very similar: They started with next to nothing and bootstrapped the financing, at some point they've done almost every task in the

In an August 2004 article on work-life integration from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, recent research continues to point to full-time working women doing it all. According to the article, "Because women continue to be the primary caretakers of children and other dependents, a major problem for women is finding time for paid work, caregiving and housework. Consequently, research suggests that women bear more of the stress associated with integrating the two arenas of work and family." The article goes on to state, "Research consistently shows that employed women do as much as twice the amount of housework as men." As a business owner, you most likely work full time plus.

Let's face it: Women often like to be caregivers and help people. Sometimes we try to be all things to all people, personally and in business. When we continually do that, something has to give, and it's likely to be us! Find balance for a satisfying life, the books all say. But how? How do we integrate our work and personal lives and learn to live a balanced life? As with everything, it's a process.

Here's a tool for starting that process. To even begin to live a balanced life, we must define exactly what it is we want. What is important to you? Write it all down. List 10 things that are important to you in your life and prioritize them from the most to least important. It can be anything from putting your company into the Fortune 500 to raising your children to be productive members of society. But the list should only contain items of importance to you. If you're like most women I know, you'll find this a challenging exercise, but an enlightening and necessary one.

Now make a list of every task you do on a daily basis. Do this for one week. Put a start and end time next to each task to determine how much time you're spending on each task. Once you've done that, categorize your tasks and rearrange the list to put the tasks you spend the most time doing on the top of the list and put the tasks you do the least on the bottom of the list.

Compare the two lists. Are you spending most of your time doing the things that are meaningful to you, or just the opposite?

Now let's complicate it even further. Add a third list of all the things you've wanted to do but never seem to have time for; things such as spending more time with your family, reworking your business plan to finally take your company global, vacationing, creating an exit strategy for your business, exercising, and spending time in quiet reflection could be some examples. This might be difficult because we've often been programmed to consider the work first, then when the work is all done (and we know how often that happens), we allow ourselves to think about doing something fun or beneficial to us personally. Women in particular often have difficulty defining what they need personally. They tend to think of their kids, their spouse or significant other, or other people's benefit before they think of their own. So when you make this list, make sure these things benefit you!

Finally, compare your three lists and put them together in a timeline that would be typical of your ideal day (OK now, let's be reasonable here), complete with work, play, volunteer work, exercise, family time, time alone with your spouse, or whatever else is most important to you. If there's not enough time in a day (yes, you do have to sleep), you'll need to prioritize based on the things you consider to be most important. You can also go further than that by looking at a year and making sure you've scheduled time in for vacations, travel to spend time with family, or just some regular "down time" to help you rejuvenate from all the hard work you do. If there are tasks on your list that are not one of your top priorities in your ideal life, trade them to other family members or hire them out.

While this exercise can be challenging in a number of ways, doing it can help you understand yourself better, which can ultimately lead to a more integrated and satisfying life. The bonus is that when you are more satisfied with your life, your satisfaction will positively affect your business, your employees, your friends, your family and even society. When you think about it, helping ourselves can be the ultimate way to help the people we care so much about and make us better business women too!