By Hannah Becker

With all the long hours spent developing strategy, networking, and managing business operations, entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart. Prioritizing work-life balance practices can help military spouse entrepreneurs (and employees!) bring their best selves to work and be the effective leader their company needs.

While business-focused activities often dominate business growth discussions, it’s important to recognize the contribution entrepreneurs make to their business. If an entrepreneur is exhausted and overworked, the company might suffer. Work-life balance should be included in business strategy discussions, as such practices might have the potential to make or break a business.

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Here are four work-life balance tips for military spouse entrepreneurs:

1. Prioritize time management. Time management is essential to effective workflow, but how many entrepreneurs have a time management system in place for themselves? While we often think of implementing such measures into our business for employees, tracking our own time, as the business owner, can be instrumental in maximizing productivity. The more productive we are as entrepreneurs, the better our businesses can be.

Entrepreneurs interested in improving their time management skills should consider tracking how their time is spent at work. Utilize a time-tracking app like Harvest or RescueTime to see where your workday goes and identify time-consuming activities that can be eliminated, delegated, or outsourced.

Once you realize how your time is spent, you can work to improve your efficiency and shift your efforts toward income-producing activities.

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2. Become comfortable with delegation. When a business is new, entrepreneurs often want to oversee every aspect of its operation. This urge to micromanage can be exacerbated by a lack of capital, as entrepreneurs might lack the financial resources required to hire an employee or outsource aspects of their operation.

While this bootstrapped business strategy might be necessary for the first few months of business operation, entrepreneurs should evaluate opportunities to delegate aspects of their business operations when applicable. A few areas of operations that are frequently delegated by the business owner to either an employee or outside firm include accounting/bookkeeping, marketing, employee payroll, public relations, and recruiting.

One budget-friendly option to assist with delegation is to hire a military spouse virtual assistant from Freedom Makers, Paper Chaser, or SquaredAway.

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3. Optimize your schedule for peak performance. Work-life balance is about minimizing stress and optimizing your schedule. The goal is to be mentally present for both your professional and personal lives. If one dominates the other (as so often can happen with entrepreneurship), you risk missing out on important events, and you might feel out of balance in all aspects of life.

Optimizing your schedules — both work and personal — to sync with your peak performance times can help eliminate some of the friction that can accompany the busy life of an entrepreneur.

If you are a morning person who enjoys getting an early start on work and needs to be wrapped up by 2:45 p.m. for afternoon pick-up, consider customizing your self-employed workday to align with this personalized scheduling. Likewise, if you do your best work in the evenings, consider structuring your workday to include personal life activities (family, exercise, etc.) in the mornings, and block your schedule so you can work into the later evening.

The traditional 9-to-5 scheduling we often associate with work might not be the best schedule option for you and your life.

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4. Prioritize the non-work aspects of your life. Work-life balance strategies involve more than just work. They also include aspects of your life such as personal relationships, exercise and wellness, hobbies, and volunteer commitments. For entrepreneurs, it can be easy to get tunnel vision around business-related responsibilities and lose sight of the non-work aspects of life.

Prioritizing activities and commitments that exist outside of your business can help restore work-life balance to a work-dominated lifestyle. If your work-life balance feels a little skewed, consider signing up for a weekly fitness class, scheduling a lunch date with your friends, or volunteering two hours a week with a nonprofit organization that helps your community. While these activities may not directly affect your business performance, they have the potential to enrich your life, which could enhance your business.

For entrepreneurs, it can be easy to forget about work-life balance strategies until we’re exhausted and overwhelmed. Being proactive about integrating work-life balance tactics into your life can help prevent early burnout. While work-life balance might be somewhat of a moving target, customizing your work schedule to complement your non-work commitments can help position your career and your business for sustainable success.

Hannah Becker is a marketing professional, tech innovator, and military spouse. She currently works as the creative director for Becker Digital and is an adjunct instructor of business, computer science, and economics.