I know its a struggle to balance work and life duties being a wife especially if you have critical responsibilities in your workplace. I like to be hands-on with my responsibilities on being a wife. I like to give the best that I can to be the best wife to my husband. But most of the time, I also have hard time on balancing the responsibilities that I have in my work.

I am an Accountant in the a company that I am employed to. I love dealing numbers, balancing figures, but at the same time I am pressured to constantly deliver the reports on a timely and error-free manner. It has been a big responsibility handling an Accounting Department. It’s so hard to be that hands-on to your family when your 8-hour workday consumes so much of your energy physically and mentally. Accounting jobs truly need your analysis which eat-up your mental energy while being at work. At every transaction, you need to come-up with sound judgment on a day-to-day operations.

I am with my other 2 colleagues doing some Accounting tasks, but my tasks are way much heavier than theirs. Usually after an 8-hour shift, I still have to work extra time to finish everything, though even working extra I am still struggling to finish my tasks 😦 . But so much for this introduction, though I have been really having hard time I still try my best to balance work and life being the best wife I can be.

I am very thankful that my husband and I are working in the same city that he can fetch me after my work and we’ll head home together. The usual work schedule in the Philippines is between 8am to 5pm, 8:30 am to 5:30 am, or 9 am to 6 pm. It varies, there are also some companies on a mid shift schedule, usually those working for international clients. So these are the tips that I can give you to balance your time being a working wife and a hands-on wife. 🙂

1. Manage your time wisely. Time is gold as an old adage said, it’s a reminder for all of us to use our time productively and efficiently. I know I myself has to improve a lot when it comes to managing my time well. Being at work at 8 am, you will be shocked that it’s already 11 am coming lunch break and your still half way done. Sometimes, I am overwhelmed with the task to do first because of the many tasks around. I realized that managing time comes hand in hand with prioritizing which task has to be done first. I realized that, the first thing to do is to identify the tasks that you have for a day, then organize which of the tasks should be prioritized. Identify which task is urgent and is important, or urgent but is not important, or not urgent but important or else not urgent and not important. This way you will be guided on which tasks should be needed to be done first. How to handle these tasks?
   1. Urgent and Important. These tasks should come first in your priorities, these are those with deadlines, or those tasks which are connected to the next tasks. Urgent and important tasks should be dealt with urgency towards its completion. Some of the examples could be a month-end report which your boss requires you to submit a week after month-end, or it can be a regulatory report that is set to be submitted every 10th of the month and failure to submit would mean paying penalties.
   2. Urgent but is not important. There are also tasked that you may classify as urgent however not important. Examples of which is attending a certain meeting. In a workplace, there are also fun events/meetings that are randomly held. You can be invited to join a Zumba session with your colleagues. It’s up to you if that is something you will categorized as important. That could be urgent as it is only held once a year but your absence won’t hinder the activity to push through. As mentioned, the level of category varies from person-to-person.
   3. Not urgent but important. There are things that you will also classify as not urgent but are important ones. One of which could be attending to your car’s general maintenance check. This is an important maintenance activity for your car but can be scheduled during weekends so not to compromise your work schedule. Important things should not be neglected as well.
   4. Not urgent and not important. This classification is crazy, I wonder why a task is being made to be classified as not urgent and not important. Can you think of something not urgent and is not important tasks? For me, based on personal experience I can tell, but I have only classified those as not urgent and not important only when I realized that it was a wasted effort. What’s your thoughts on this?
2. Do your best when at work. As a working wife, on weekdays I spend longer hours at work than being home, especially because my work requires me to report in the company’s office. The most important tip to share would be to always do your best when at work. Know the reason why you have to work, typical reason would be our work is the source of our bread and butter, no work, there’s no pay, and no pay means no money, no money means no food for the family. No matter how hard your work is remember that because of your work you’re able to provide for your family and able to support the needs of your loved ones. If you have an 8 to 5 job, do well with the given time to finish your work so that at the end of the workday, you will go home productive and have done your best towards your work. Work by example, put your best forward into your work, remember it is your bread and butter.
3. Family time is Family time. I always remind myself that if my work will compromise so much of my time that I have to choose between work and my family, I will always choose family. The topmost priority for me is my family, and I worked for a living because of my family. So as much as I can, I want my life after work to be spent for my family. I don’t want to receive calls and text, or being oblige to answer an email after working hours. If we will analyze, we only have 24 hours a day, 12 hours or more is spent in preparation to work, work proper (in an 8 hour work-shift setting), and travelling back & forth, this is only if you have closer distance from your work to your residence, but could be longer if you’re far from your office. Which means that our regular office setting consumes half of our day, the remaining 12 hours is spent in doing household chores and family time (5 hours) and the remaining 7 hours for sleep. How ideal, but because we have a lot of distractions nowadays, we have social media, cellphones, netflix etc. we tend to mismanaged our time. Instead of spending family time with family members we spend our time on not important things which are not urgent, at the end of the day we will realize why have we wasted our time. The worst case, the next day we are doing the cycle of improper time management again and again. If you want to balance your work and your time being a wife, a mother and a family man change your habits, family time matters. After a tiring work day, connect with your family members, know how their days went and communicate with them.
4. Babe-time with your spouse is a must. Sometimes, it’s challenging to sneak a date with your spouse especially if you have kids to take care. But babe time with your spouse does not only means going out, you can set-up a candle light dinner at home, or watch a good movie together. Spend time with each other talking how the day went, open-up your feelings and thoughts to your spouse. I can’t guarantee you that everyday would be a smooth sailing one because for sure along the way, there will be challenges in your marriage but remember that you have each other. At the end of a long tiring day, the best babetime for me is when we pray together before we go to sleep, this way we will renew each other in prayer that the next day we will both be guided by God in everything that we will do.
5. Plan the next day ahead. For me a good way to prepare for the day is through planning. It works for me in managing our weekend together especially during pay day. Why pay day? hahaha this is crazy but pay day because this is the time that we usually do and buy our groceries, in a month we only buy our groceries for the whole month once. That’s why pay day excites me, my way of planning is to come-up with a list of groceries to buy, of course we need a list because we are on a tight budgeting. Usually our grocery time is scheduled the closest Saturday after pay-day 🙂 we want to spend our weekends well, so aside from grocery time we also make sure to have quality time together so it’s important to plan within the expected time tables.

Managing work life balance is really a struggle for everyone. As a wife, I wish everyone especially those working wife like me to be able to find happiness and work life balance as well. At first, it will require adjustments, as even myself is still consistently adjusting but soon hopingly everyone will find its balance.

Sending virtual hugs and love to all of you,

Mrs. Mira Ducusin ❤