I’ve had a lot of people ask how we’re doing with finding a healthier work/life balance after publicly saying it was a goal for the year. We never planned to work nights, weekends, and even on vacation, but once your jobs revolve around a 24/7 internet and your laptops are only a room or two away, it’s easy to lose track of boundaries.
While we were working on the front porch recently, and making steady progress on the scallops and boxed-in columns, we decided it was a good time to revisit our balance efforts. Admitting the problem was the first step: when both of your careers are online and always reachable, learning to switch off takes intention. Saying it out loud — even publicly — helped make it stick. We wrote about our resolutions and mentioned them in interviews and videos, which created accountability to follow through.
After a few months of focused effort, we’re seeing tangible improvements. We still have work to do — we continue to work several weekends a month — but we’re moving toward a more sustainable pace. Here are the strategies that have helped us get more done in less time and carve out real non-work hours.
- Write a clear, prioritized to-do list. Make a list of tasks and circle your top five priorities for the day. Tackle those first. It’s tempting to knock out easy, small items to feel productive, but that can be a form of procrastination if it pushes back the bigger, time-sensitive tasks. Prioritizing keeps momentum focused on what matters most.
- Be satisfied with completing your top five. Between childcare and interruptions, it often takes us the whole day to finish our five most important items. Once they’re done, we resist the urge to add more and work late into the night. Allowing ourselves evenings without screens helps us recharge and creates a healthier routine.
- Reduce inbox clutter. We each get a lot of email daily. A portion of that is junk, so spending a short amount of time unsubscribing from recurring, unnecessary messages made mornings more manageable. Using canned responses for common replies saves time and keeps messages from piling up.
- Cut one post per week. Stepping down from eight posts to seven a week made a surprisingly big difference. One fewer post each week adds up to a substantial reduction over a year, freeing up evening or weekend time for family or rest instead of maintaining an unsustainable publishing pace.
- Be realistic about capacity. We’re two people who love what we do, but we can’t do the work of ten. Projects could always be more elaborate, and posts could always include more photos, but at some point it’s better to finish and publish than to perfect endlessly. We produce a lot of content each month, so over-polishing one item can take time away from everything else on the schedule.
To broaden our perspective, I texted a handful of relatives and friends with the question: “How do you work smarter, not harder?” Their answers were practical and varied, reflecting different lifestyles and responsibilities. A few recurring themes stood out: delegation, structure, systems, and boundaries.
One relative finds help in a strong carpool network and teaches older children to handle chores like laundry and lunches, freeing time for other tasks. Another recommends giving everything a place in the home and carrying a laundry basket floor-to-floor for quick tidying — small habits that prevent clutter from piling up. Several people praised batching similar tasks: editing many photos at once, uploading several post images in one session, or grouping physical tasks together (spray painting multiple items in the same session, for example).
Email strategies came up repeatedly: using canned responses, maintaining inbox zero so email doesn’t become a to-do list, separating work and personal accounts, and hiding notifications while focusing on a task. Scheduling is another powerful tool: treating a calendar like a boss by blocking time for specific tasks, workouts, and even downtime prevents work from creeping into everything. One person shared a strict rule of never working on Saturdays to protect personal time.
Other helpful tips included creating systems the first time a recurring task is done so future repetitions are faster, evaluating and refining processes periodically, and outsourcing tasks that drain your energy but must still be completed. For families, menu planning and keeping a few go-to meal staples on hand can remove daily decision fatigue. Technology also helps: to-do lists, reminders, and calendars on a phone keep logistics organized and reduce mental clutter.
Different methods work for different people: some thrive on multitasking to save minutes, while others focus deeply on one task at a time for better results. The key is identifying what fits your personality and responsibilities and building habits and systems that reinforce those choices.
We’re still a work in progress, but these changes have helped us regain some balance and be more intentional with our time. What strategies have worked for you when trying to work smarter instead of harder?
Update – We’ve had many questions about professional blogging — how we built the site, grew traffic, and turned it into a business — so we’ve shared details about how we started a blog, grew an audience, and made it a full-time endeavor.