Achieving a work-family balance is often a great challenge for new dads. This is because the arrival of newborns presents parents with a challenge of spending as much time as possible with the babies while at the same time ensuring that they work hard enough to provide the best life for their family. The inability to achieve this balance often leads to stress on the part of the dads. Here are 5 tips on how new dads can achieve a work-family balance:
Simplify your life
New dads should adopt a flexible lifestyle that enables them to simplify their lives by economizing on their time. If, for instance, you have spare time that you use to play a game of golf or attend a basketball league with your friends, you can forego such activities to spend time with your family. You should also sacrifice any time you had initially spared for following up a work project during your spare time and instead spend it with your newborn baby.
As a new dad, you should take your time to nurture good relationship with your newborn baby. This goes a long way in establishing a good bond with your baby and family. New dads who put their families first and value spending quality time with their family are an envy of their friends.
Show equal passion
New dads need to express equal passion and motivation in balancing their family life with their work requirements. As much as you are keen on earning a living, you should use equal energy and dedication to achieving a work-family balance. You need to realize that both your family and work are important in your life.
Always remember that there is no perfect parent. Each new dad has their own flaws as far as bringing up their children is concerned. Due to this, you should put in great effort to work on your weaknesses and other factors that may be taking up much of your family time.
Calendar your family
Your calendar may be fully packed with work commitments, meetings, social activities, appointments, and places you want to visit. While all of these activities are important to you, it is only important that you calendar your family in your daily hustles. Allocating time for your family in your day to day calendar makes it possible to balance work and family life.
Children never forget any precious time they spend with their parents. Therefore, it is important to ensure that you plan your diary to allocate some time to spend with the baby in between your busy schedule.
Maximize on work flexibility
If possible, you can strategize on how to achieve better work flexibility so that you can have more spare time to bond with your newborn baby and spend with your family. If possible, you can improve your working schedule so that you have at least two full days during the weekend to spend at home.
If you can do your work from home, then it is advisable to use this opportunity as it maximizes the time you are at home with your family. Enjoy a relaxed time at home with your family while still working on your projects. Leaving your workplace early is another great idea on how you can make your work schedule flexible and have enough time to spend with your family.
Integrate working and family life
Technology has been very instrumental in enabling new dads to integrate their working responsibilities and family life. Use technology such as a smartphone to be a hands-on dad by installing apps such as baby monitoring apps to monitor your newborn baby while at work. These apps come in handy when you have a caretaker or nanny attending to your newborn baby. It is worth noting that dads need to be involved in the upbringing of their children in the same way that mothers are involved.
To accomplish a healthy work-family balance, new dads should evaluate their lives to maximize their spare time, sacrifice less important activities, seek work approaches that are less time intensive, be up-to-date with their baby’s growth, work with their partners in bringing up the children, and strategize on working flexibly.
This is a guest post by Danny. A young dad and a blogger who loves writing about parenting topics over at his blog MyParentingJournal.com.