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Five tips to prevent your business from invading your personal life

Dubai - Be more productive at work, so you can have quality time at home

As an entrepreneur, the line between professional and personal life is often blurred. Putting friends and family aside is a trap in which too many entrepreneurs fall.
Many entrepreneurs are afraid of neglecting their family and their friends. Here are five tips to prevent your company devouring your family and social life, and to focus on how to help you develop it further. 
Be more productive: Being more productive will allow you to spend more time at home. Be careful, it's not about working more, but about working smarter. Reduce time spent in front of your computer or at the controls of your business by setting specific goals. Avoid disturbances and falling into social media; take short and frequent breaks, and use daily rituals to increase your productivity.
Do not focus on work-life balance: A total balance between the two - spending as much time on your business and your family and friends - is not only unrealistic, but perhaps not very profitable. Taking the approach of being as much flexible as possible and aiming for total efficiency is the ultimate goal. Do not think of yourself only as an entrepreneur, but also as a parent, a spouse, a friend. Try to be effective in each of these roles.
Talk about your business at home, but not too much: Being an entrepreneur brings worries and responsibilities that are difficult to bring home at night. Instead of keeping silent, share aspects of your business with your loved ones. It's not about complaining, but rather explaining why you come back so late at night, or for instance why you need to spend your Friday or Saturday morning on the phone. Tell them also about your failures, difficulties and successes. Thus, you will not only be able to open a dialogue with your family, who may regret not enjoying your presence, but also sharing your values and work ethic with your children, which is a valuable learning experience.
Learn to delegate and trust: You can't always take on everything alone. It's a factor of stress but also an imbalance between your professional and personal life. Being responsible is not synonymous with solitary. Managing a team also means trusting it and therefore delegating and sharing. By distributing - equally - tasks among your employees based on their skills, you will optimise your workload. This will also allow your team to develop new skills that will help them grow as individuals.
Integrate interests and passion into business: You have probably become an entrepreneur to finally live your passion. However, with your daily routine, it is easy to lose sight of it. If you give meaning to your work, you will flourish as an individual, and this will inevitably have a positive impact on other aspects of your life. This can be helping others, sharing your values, and interacting with an environment that fascinates you. It's up to you to try to reintroduce a little passion into your firm. Escape yourself.
If your office is at home, it can often be hard to work from there. Feel free to take advantage of the nomadic life that technology offers us to go on weekends or holidays, even when you can't completely free yourself. In addition, take your family or spouse on business trips, especially if these trips or conferences are held in pleasant places.
The way you work to develop your personal interests is crucial to fulfil your professional life without sacrificing the things that matter the most to you, your family and your friends.
The writer is founder of Zenboxed and board member at the Entrepreneurs Organisation. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.