How balanced is your life? And what elements do you sacrifice?

[PapitoSpice]

I’ve a theory that a good life is one that balances a number of items:

a) Family
b) Friends
c) Career / work
d) Health / exercise
e) Hobbies / learning

The problem is that it’s hard to find the time for all these, especially with young children. In my case, I find it hard to find time for friends and hobbies, after work, family, and exercise.

I’d like to spend more time learning a new skill, but with young children, the balance seems impossible.

Are you able to include and balance all these elements, or is it a pipe-dream? What do you drop?

I work part time 20 hours a week and have time for everything I do. I feel I have a perfect work life balance.
I have time to exercise, see friends, do charity work, cook from scratch and spend time with DH.

DD is grown up and living away from home.

It’s a pipe dream. I love the idea of juggling and you have some rubber balls and some glass balls. The rubber balls bounce. Glass balls are your health and your very close relationships. Drop these and they will break. There are seasons of life for everything else.

maybe that’s the thing. I work 36 hours and have two young children, so just achieving exercise seems a huge achievement. Time for hobbies seems impossible

The idea you can do everything all the time is a myth.

Over a lifetime, if lucky, you get to do all of them.

You can learn a lot in a year from 30 minutes each week - can you find that amount of time?

I think I manage a pretty good balance between the items on that list, but the difference is that my kids are teens. You will get your life back OP!

I struggle to fit it all in. I work FT 40 hour week, have 3 DC 13-15 , 2 have SEN. I do all the housework & life admin inc mental load. Fitting in friends/family/DC/hobbies is v hard and I often find it overwhelming

I work full time but flexibly and only have one DD. Feeling burnout some weeks but still have time to read a Kindle and do some hobbies after she's in bed. I joined a fancy gym where we all exercise - me while she's at the crèche, and she does tennis and swimming. This has made a big difference.

Being able to work part time is privileged and the op has young children, so this is not that helpful as a reply!

I’m a SAHM but definitely sacrificed friends and exercise and health and wellbeing (trying to get ontop of that again) I do try to prioritise reading everyday as it makes me quite happy. I think when DD is a bit bigger it will get a bit easier.

I work in a school, term time only and it can be very busy during term time. Life feels like, work, work, work then kids, kids, kids in the evenings, weekends and holidays. A bit of time with DH who is as busy and overwhelmed with work and childcare as I am ATM, so we don't get much couple time.

I try to exercise, but it isn't my favourite thing to do so I suppose I don't make as much time for it as I should.

We live far from my home so I don't have that same connection to where we live. I do make time for friendships, like being with other mums who I'll do playdates with and a mums group who do things like cook meals for mums with new babies (church group). But it would be nice to do something less child-related some day! My work involved kids too obviously, so my life absolutely revolves around children, which is fine but tiring sometimes.

Now my DDs are young teens, I can balance work, exercise and immediate family. There's a bit more time to see friends and wider family, but they are definitely neglected. And I use what could be hobby/learning time to exercise. That said, I just bought some paperbacks and am making time to read.

I remember a time when I couldn't do anything on the list properly (and some days still feel like that), so there is hope OP.

I have a lovely ds, four close female friends, siblings I am close to, a career that I enjoy, we have a warm comfortable home, I parkrun and practice martial arts.

But no partner. Over the years I've had boyfriends who can't cope with me earning what I do, or who really wanted a housekeeper, or who saw me as 'a good financial bet'. I even had one who told me that I had to get rid of DS every other weekend if I wanted our relationship to progress! DS was 9 at the time.

So many self indulgent men. I couldn't find one who was happy to be an equal partner and so in the end, I stopped looking.

I didn’t make a choice to drop anything, it’s just how my life turned out. It’s easier to do a variety of other things without children of course. I’m late thirties, divorced and now dating for fun, life didn’t go to plan but I’m really happy. I love living alone - with my dog.
I work 35 hours, plus a little at home. I have a fulfilling and interesting career.
Exercise, which I enjoy and is social 4- 5 x a week, then an evening cooking and reading.
See friends for a meal or cinema Friday night. See a different group of friends for a hike with the dogs or go away for the weekend every couple of months.

I see my Mum a couple of times a week but haven’t got other family, so maybe that’s what I miss out on. Although I thought I’d have DC, I’m happy and content with my life.

OP, I think if there is something you think is too important to neglect, you have to allocate a specific time and ensure you always get that time.

If it's exercise, set a regular time or a class and ensure your dh is always there to do child care. Being single I used my lunch hours to go for a run, knowing ds was safe at school.

Decide what is important and then book the time.

I’ve used a ‘Life Grid’ with these kinds of categories in the past, it’s quite a well known method of personal development and organisation. You can choose your own categories (some people include spirituality or community etc).

It will change throughout your life so it’s worth revisiting often. I don’t think it’s helpful to make comparisons with people who are not in the same stage of life as you, people who don’t have children or have older children etc. My kids are teens now and pretty self sufficient. Go back 5 or 10 years and things were very different!

focus on your own stage / life, and try not to make comparisons. I can guarantee that most mothers of young kids will not be ticking all the boxes!

This is such sage advice

Some of them you can merge. I see my friends for a coffee when we've finished doing sport and I'm lucky that I learn a lot in my job. Family is a challenge because we moved abroad, but that also means that extended family time is scheduled and limited so doesn't take over and expectations are reasonable. Immediate family is the glass ball someone described earlier.

Yes I manage but I'm quite organised with it. I roughly plan out when I'm going to the gym so that takes priority over other things that day. Then weekends are planned so one is for seeing friends, another is for seeing family, another is for DIY in the house etc. I guess I'm quite fortunate that my hobby is exercise so that's two birds with one stone 😂 But it's all about finding time.

There's a really good Ted talk about how you should never say "I don't have time for that". You should instead say "that's not my priority right now". She's some kind of coach I think, but she helps people carve out time to do things like learn a new language or go on a crochet course etc. It's worth a watch and changed my attitude.

I think I manage the balance pretty well but I work part time two days a week.

I manage to hold some my career, have time with my DH and DC, see friends (with children weekly and without once a month) and I've just started Pilates and another hobby as my youngest has started preschool so I have one day a week child free.

I think if you can work part time, once preschool/school kicks in you have more time to do things that interest you while juggling housework/life in general etc.

I must stress before preschool I had zero time to do anything for but plan catch up with friends and I add these to my DH calendar so he knows in advance.

well i am doing family and work 90% of the time

but facilitate my children with all of those things so think doing ok 😂

i'd like to fit more time for health/ exercise
friends are pretty much in same position

hobbies and learning? ha no chance

Working full-time with kids younger than teenage years is simply tough going and frankly something has to give. You can choose if that’s building friendships, exercise, volunteering..
It gets better though!

Ive had to rethink how I do my hobbies. I can't commit to a choir every week, but I do online choirs when I can and try To go to a choir weekend/day at least once a year.

I think it's hard to find a good balance. I am a stay at home mum to four kids, 2 autistic and I don't mind not working as I think the place I need to be at the moment is at home, making sure their needs are met as best I can. When I worked, their needs felt pushed aside. I'm not knocking anyone who works who's in a similar situation, but it's right for us as a family. But having a career and making time to see friends regularly is something I sacrifice. If I had the choice of anything I could do more, it would be spending more quality time with my husband because we get hardly any. 90% of my life is home based which doesn't leave much time for my personal needs but I know I'm doing what I need to do, so I'm content with that.

You could do a ‘Wheel of Life’ op, it’s a tool to help you visualise what you are happy and less happy with in various categories of your life.

I do 5 mins duolingo and 5 mins meditation each day to do some learning and spirituality. I aim to see a friend at least once a month and if I haven’t anything planned I make a plan! I exercise at home around kids/ work. I also try to do something new or challenging every month. This month it’s indoor skydiving

It's only achievable if you only work part time with dc. I work 20 hours per week. But I actually 'work' more than a full time role with the time I put in to my dc - teenagers but still ferrying around (a lot), laundry, cooking. I think we need to stop feeling guilty if we 'only' work part time with dc. I still had far more disposable time pre dc with a full time job.