How a Virtual Assistant Helps Women Solopreneurs Reclaim Work-Life Balance

I’ve always believed in women: we are strong, decisive, independent, resilient, and intelligent. As a new mother, I balanced caring for my baby, working 40+ hours a week and supervising a student teacher, finishing my master’s degree, and household chores, but I forgot to find time for myself. I struggled to sleep. I ate too much junk food and drank too much coffee. I didn’t have time to care for myself. 

Most women are good multitaskers, but being pulled in so many directions is taxing. Exhausting. You might feel like you’re juggling a lot, but nothing is really getting done. Or at least done to your expectations. That’s how I felt throughout my career. I just couldn’t devote enough attention to one area of my life, including my child. I always likened it to juggling balls, which kept dropping. 

Sure, I tried over the years to care for myself. I’d have a day to myself, or if my family went camping with the Scouts, I’d stay home and try to relax. Unfortunately, I was usually too stressed to truly enjoy my time. 

My one self-care routine was walking our dog. Without my pup, I’m not sure I would have walked every day. Sometimes, our walks were in the dark, or no more than 30 minutes, but I felt that I was attempting to care for myself. 

Maybe you left the corporate world or a career in another field to care for yourself, have time for your family, and pursue a passion. I know I did; I’ve wanted to be my own boss for many years, and it feels good to be the one calling all the shots. 

For some women solopreneurs, though, they’re finding themselves with less time and less balance between their personal and professional lives. 

Let me say this: finding balance between the two parts of your life is worth it. We all need and deserve it. Without that time, whatever it is and however it looks, we’re back to running ourselves ragged again. We didn’t open our own businesses just to work all the time and feel stressed out. 

One solution is finding someone to help. Maybe you can’t afford to hire an employee, but you might consider a virtual assistant. Why?

Virtual Assistants offer an array of services and reasonably priced packages. You could hire a VA for five hours a month, for example, to declutter your inbox or update your website. That gives you five hours back to take care of you. 

You can hire a VA for the amount of time you think you need, and most VAs are flexible enough to add hours if you need them. Five hours a month is a reasonable number of hours to begin with because you’ll be able to assess whether you need more or fewer hours. 

You’ll also be able to assess if you and your VA work well together. At the end of the month, you can choose to continue or to end your contract. 

Your VA might also be able to take on other tasks that suck away your time. Most VAs have many marketable skills that can help your business grow and help you find more time in your week. 

Working full-time was difficult and stressful for me, as it is for many women. I didn’t take good care of myself, and eventually, not doing so caught up with me. It’s not a weakness to find some help, which I wish I’d understood then. If you’re a strong, independent, self-sufficient woman who might need help from time to time, reach out to A Writer’s Ink (www.a-writers-ink.com) to find out how you can find more time in your week. 

How you choose to spend that time is up to you!