Let me be honest with you from the start: I don't think finding balance in life is actually possible. Not in the way it's sold to us, anyway. Not the perfectly carved-up day with two hours for exercise, a wholesome family dinner, a productive work session, quality time with your partner, a tidy house, and still somehow squeezing in a bit of "me time." That version of balance? It doesn't exist. Not in my life, anyway.

Most days, it's just work. Work that spills into evenings, bleeds into weekends, and somehow follows me on holiday too.

If you're nodding along, this one's for you.

Why Finding a Balance in Life Feels So Hard

The honest answer is that there are simply too many things competing for the same hours. On any given day I'm trying to fit in family time, relationship time, time for myself, work, exercise, housework, and errands. That's before anything unexpected lands in the day.

It's not a time management problem. It's a maths problem. There genuinely aren't enough hours, and pretending otherwise just makes you feel like you're failing when really you're just human.

Running your own business makes this even harder. There's no clocking off at five. There's no clean divide between work time and home time when your office is your house and your phone is always in your pocket. It's work 25/8 instead of 9 to 5, and the guilt of not doing enough follows you even when you try to step away. I've written before about the real pros and cons of working from home - and the lack of an off switch is one of the biggest cons nobody warns you about.

I've lost count of the number of times I've felt like I'm not putting 100% into anything - not work, not family, not relationships, not myself - because I'm stretched so thin across all of it.

What Actually Helps (In My Experience)

I want to be careful here, because I don't want to give you a listicle of productivity hacks that make it all sound easy. It isn't. But there are a few things I do that genuinely help me feel more grounded, even when everything feels like a juggle.

Get Outside First Thing

Most mornings I try to get out for a run or a walk before anyone else is up. Even just 30 minutes. It's probably the single most useful thing I do for my headspace.

I won't pretend it feels effortless. Some mornings I'm out there with a head full of to-do lists, already mentally drafting emails. My brain rarely fully switches off - it's still turning ideas over even on a run. But there's something about being outside and moving that clears enough mental clutter to make the day feel more manageable. The stress is still there, but it's quieter.

It's hard to prioritise when you know the work is piling up. But skipping it to get straight to my desk doesn't actually make me more productive. It just makes me more frazzled. If you're wondering how to fit exercise into a busy schedule, starting small really is the answer - even 20 minutes counts.

Protect the Things That Matter Most

How to keep balance in life doesn't have to mean doing everything equally. For me, it means deciding what's non-negotiable and defending those things even when work is loud.

Family dinners together most evenings is one of mine. We manage it six or all seven nights a week, and it matters. It's not a long thing - it's just half an hour where we're all in the same room, actually talking and sharing a meal together. A family day at weekends, or at least half a day, is another one I try to hold onto.

These aren't big gestures. But they create a bit of rhythm in the week, and rhythm is probably the closest I get to balance.

Evening Walks With Your Partner

A few nights a week, after dinner, my husband and I will go for a short walk together. It's low-key and easy to fit in, and it carves out some proper time to talk - not about logistics or what needs doing, just actual conversation.

I'd recommend this to anyone trying to find balance in your life while also running a business or working long hours. You don't need a big plan. A 20-minute walk a few times a week is enough to feel like you're choosing your relationship rather than just existing alongside it while both of you stare at screens.

Keeping things strong when life gets busy takes real effort - there's a lot more on how to keep a relationship strong after having kids if that resonates.

The Work From Home Balance Problem

If you work from home - especially if you run your own business - you already know how blurry the edges get. Work comes on holiday. Work happens on Sunday evenings. Work is the first thing you check in the morning and the last thing on your mind before sleep.

I haven't found a fix for this. Genuinely. What I've found is a kind of uneasy peace with it. Running a business solo means the responsibility never fully leaves you, and trying to pretend otherwise just creates more stress.

What helps is accepting that this is the trade-off you made, and being intentional about the things you do protect - rather than feeling guilty about the fact that you can't switch off completely. Managing the wellbeing side of working from home is something I think about a lot, and it gets easier once you stop expecting yourself to behave like an employee with set hours.

How to Find Balance in Life and Work When You're Running It Solo

This is the bit nobody tells you before you go self-employed. When you work for yourself, there's no HR policy telling you to take annual leave. No manager noticing you're burning out. No automatic end to the working day.

How to find balance in life and work when you're running everything yourself comes down to a few things I've had to learn the hard way.

First, your worth isn't your output. Working 60 hours a week doesn't always make you more successful, it just makes you more tired. The goal is effective hours, not maximum hours - even if it takes a while to actually believe that.

Second, time off isn't a reward for finishing everything. You will never finish everything. Taking a break when the to-do list is still full isn't laziness, it's necessary. The list will still be there. You need to be functional enough to tackle it.

Third, how you feel at the end of the week matters. If every week ends with you completely depleted, something needs to shift - even if you can't overhaul everything at once.

If you're a working parent juggling all of this alongside a household, you're genuinely not alone. Managing life as a full-time working parent is hard in a way that's difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't done it, and the biggest shift for me was just accepting that some days or nights will be a write-off.

It's a Juggling Act, Not a Science

Finding balance in your life isn't a problem you solve once and tick off the list. It shifts constantly. Some weeks the work has to take priority. Some weeks family does. Some weeks you get your mornings back and feel like a person again, and some weeks you don't make it out the door before 10am and you're answering emails until midnight.

The goal, I think, isn't perfect balance. It's staying aware of when things have been lopsided for too long, and making small adjustments before you hit a wall.

If you're in a season right now where balance feels completely out of reach - where it's basically just work, all the time, with everything else squeezed into the gaps - I want you to know that's actually really normal, especially if you're building something, managing a household, raising a family, or doing all three at once.

The struggle is real. You're not doing it wrong. But it is worth looking honestly at your week and finding even one or two small things you can protect, not because it'll solve everything, but because it makes the hard stretches more sustainable.

Practical Things Worth Trying

I don't have a magic system, but here are a few small things that have helped me get closer to how to balance my life - or at least feel less like it's all unravelling.

• A short morning walk or run before the day starts, even 20 minutes, sets a completely different tone to going straight to a screen
• Pick one or two non-negotiables each week - a family dinner, a walk with your partner, an hour with no phone - and treat them like actual appointments
• If you work from home, try to have at least one clear signal that the working day has ended, even if it's just making a cup of tea somewhere that isn't your desk
• Stop framing rest as something you have to earn. Rest is part of what keeps you going.
• Accept that some days it's just going to be work, and that's okay, as long as it isn't every day indefinitely

There are also some useful time management tips for working from home worth bookmarking if you want to get more strategic about how your days are structured - especially if you're self-employed and making it up as you go.

Finding Life Balance Is an Ongoing Thing

There's no version of this where you arrive at a perfectly balanced life and stay there. Life changes, work changes, seasons change - and so does what you need.

What I keep coming back to is this: balance isn't about doing everything equally well all the time. It's about not losing yourself completely in any one thing for so long that everything else falls apart.

Some days I manage that better than others. Most days it's still a juggle. But the morning walk helps, the family dinners help, and being honest about how hard it actually is helps more than pretending otherwise.

If you're trying to figure out how to get balance in life while also building a business, managing a household, and being present for the people you love - you're not alone, and you're not failing. It's just genuinely, objectively hard. And anyone who tells you otherwise is probably selling something.