One question we’re asked all the time is, “how do you balance blogging with your jobs?”. We’ve answered this before in the past but things have definitely become increasingly more difficult lately. Nothing bad, just busy! In case you’re new here, we’ll bring you up to speed. In the past, we’ve talked about our day jobs and tips for balancing life and work. If you follow us on Instagram, you already know how backward our work schedules are during the week. Alex works during the week and Mike works night shifts Saturday through Monday. That means we don’t really see each other those three days. But you might be surprised to know that Mike actually chose that schedule. It works out best for us because there is consistency. Before he worked this schedule, he would work the most random days. It was never the same week to week. The majority of our blogging responsibilities and events are during the week. Switching to the weekend schedule has helped us so much. Oh, and if we’re being honest, the pay was better lol.
Things have become much busier for us since the last time we wrote a blog post on this topic. That means we’ve had to become much more strict with how we go about working. Obviously, we don’t do this full-time so we have to balance jobs on top of blogging. Since we’ve been getting busier with the blog, we’ve needed to make some strategic schedule choices. First off, we are so lucky to have each other to lean on when it comes to work. Before Mike goes to work for the weekend, we make a game plan. Who needs to do what and when? That has been super helpful since we aren’t able to talk much while he is at the hospital. The same applies to Monday when Alex goes to work for the week. We like to divide and conquer. Staying organized and delegating tasks like this has made a huge difference in our productivity.
Since we have been busier lately, we’ve needed to know when to stop working. This has been hard. We’re sure you guys can relate to this too. Instead of just turning things off at a certain time, we’ve been trying to actually block out entire evenings. Attending events is another part of this job. As fun as these events can be, it can also be exhausting. Don’t get us wrong, we are super grateful to even have this dilemma. But we’ve been getting better at saying no. Our relationship and personal life has to come first. Always. Especially since we work together. Though we absolutely love working together, we need to ensure the conversation is not always centered around work. In all honesty, this is still very much a work in progress. But it’s something we’ve discussed and actively work on regularly.
Another change we’ve made that has made a HUGE difference is working out regularly. We know this might be something you put on the back-burner when you don’t have time. But for us, working out regularly has helped us so much. SoulCycle is our go-to workout. If you follow us on Instagram, you already know that we are obsessed. Not only do we get out any pent-up energy we might have, but we’re also able to clear our minds. It’s honestly become therapy for us. We can’t stress this enough — working out helps keep your life in check.
The last way we balance life and work might sound silly but it really is so important to us. Our friends are so helpful when it comes to balancing life and work. When we sat down and thought about why they are so great, among the long list, we realized one thing in common between everyone — they aren’t in the blogging/social media world. Don’t get us wrong. We’ve met some of our best friends through blogging and we love them endlessly. But we also have a core group of friends that are totally removed from all of this. They are incredibly supportive of what we do and get it all. But they also don’t live it every day. They keep us in check. When we hang out with them, we can turn things off. We don’t have to talk about work or social media. It honestly helps us so much. It allows us to recharge and decompress. They truly mean the world to us.
As we’re writing this, we’ve realized this June will mark 4 years since we started our blog. WHAT. How has time flown by like that?!? It seems like just yesterday we were sitting on our couch in our first apartment talking about creating a blog. Almost 4 years later, we’re writing about how we balance working on that blog. Though it still is very much a work in progress, we’re proud of what we’ve created so far.
Do you have any tips on balancing life and work? We would LOVE to hear what you think! Let us know in the comments below. Until next time…
