A happy personal life outside the company is a lifeline for many entrepreneurs. It is important to have something in your life which isn’t dependable of the success of your company. Something that puts the importance of different incidents to a right scale and that way helps coping with stress coming from work.
Many believe that running a successful start-up and happy family life at the same time can’t be done. I am not saying it is easy. Many compromises must be done along the way. But there are some entrepreneurs out there who have been able to pull it all together.
You must take care of yourself first before you can take care of others
Co-Founder and CEO of Smartly.io, Kristo Ovaska, is said to be one of them. He says that setting clear limits is the best way to succeed. “If you say to yourself that this quarter I will work a bit more and take a holiday when it gets easier, you are just fooling yourself. It never gets easier.”
You must take care of yourself first before you can take care of others, Kristo says. He bikes to work every day, never works on weekends, has a proper five-week summer holiday and tries to have a week of holiday in each quarter. “It is a marathon, not a sprint. You cannot insist on others to take care of themselves and their families if you are not doing it yourself.”
Setting the right targets for your employees is important. Having a well-balanced culture and helping your company employees to achieve good work-life balance will improve the performance of the whole organization. Plus, the reputation of having a good work-life balance in the company can be a strong advantage in the competition for new employees.
by Ville Huovinen
