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How are you thinking about life margin?

You’ve heard of profit margin — which is an essential aspect of any successful business. But how are you factoring in your margin for life?

That could look like:

• The room in your business to live your life on your own terms.

• The freedom to take the morning off or not work on Mondays. 

• The ability to set hours for client calls and set boundaries around communication

• The freedom to say no to certain things so that you can make more room for what matters most.

What does that look like to you?

Maybe it’s exercise or travel. Maybe it’s a sport or a hobby. Maybe it’s coaching, teaching, or volunteering.

There are SO many things that make up a full life. What’s amazing about entrepreneurship is that you get to create your ideal vision for what you want your life to look like.

How you can create more life margin

As Ronald Banks explains in this video, margin is the space between your load and your limit.

“Margin can be the gap between rest and exhaustion. Margin is the opposite of overload. If you’re feeling overloaded and overwhelmed right now, you have no margin.”

Practical steps for creating more margin in your life

Step 1: Define what an ideal life looks like for you

Our energy, attention, and resources are finite.

What are your values? What are your priorities? 

How does your schedule match this?

James Clear also offers some good questions to ask yourself:

Step 2: Conduct a Life Calculus audit

Make a list of all daily/weekly activities and categorize them as:

• Revenue Generating

• Energizing/Recharging

• Soul-Sucking

• Obligatory but Low-Impact

Then you can assign timeboxes to each category. For example, cap revenue-generating tasks at 25 hours/week.

Set a 10-hour/week minimum for energizing activities. This ensures that you’re creating space for activities you love and that bring joy/creative energy etc.

Relentlessly try to prune the soul suckers and outsource the obligatory low-impact tasks when possible.

For me, revenue-generating things include posting more on social and doing more active outreach on LinkedIn. Energizing things for me include walking/exercise, connecting with other people doing similar work, and online webinars where I get to learn new skills.

As much as I’d love to put invoicing and managing finances into the soul-sucking category, I tag it as obligatory (but hope to outsource one day!).

My goal is to create a weekly schedule that is built around these tasks, optimized for what I both enjoy most and that moves the business further along.

Step 3: Reverse engineer your business to support this 

Test perspective expanding by asking yourself frequently:

• "Will this matter a year from now?"

• "Am I being useful or just being busy?"

• "What could be the bigger picture opportunity I'm missing by saying yes?"

Resources to learn more 💫

Want to connect or work together? Here are a few ways:

• I offer weekly office hours for new freelancers. Book a 30-minute call here.

  • P.S. here are my 5 tips for beginning freelancers

• If you want to hire me for a project, reach out here. 

• Follow me on LinkedIn for more thoughts and tips on freelancing, building a business, and more