Ever find yourself glued to the phone on a Saturday morning? Your kiddos fighting in the background, your significant other calling your name over and over, the house in shambles laundry everywhere, dishes out from last night (alright this might be a slight exaggeration but you get the picture) and your so engrossed in the email you just received from one of your clients asking a simple question.

Our society has come to expect near immediate responses, while this is great for those people who have a team of people helping to manage emails, phone calls etc., as a small business owner how is it possible for you to be on 24/7 to handle client needs? Well, the answer is you aren’t expected too. Over the past few months of life as a new mom, partner, and business owner there have been some times where I have gotten increasingly frustrated. Working long hours into the middle of the night and all weekend to get stuff done then starting Monday all over again. Never getting 3 minutes to recharge. What I realized by doing this for a few months (and I’ll be honest this has plagued me the better part of my career even before Mommyhood) is that I wasn’t doing anything at 100%. I wasn’t feeling excited to to run my business. I wasn’t truly present at family gatherings because every time I heard that iPhone text tone I was rushing to check my phone.

After a few months of this I began to think to myself this wasn’t what I signed up for when I went into business for myself. It was driving me crazy and in that moment I decided that was the beginning of the end of feeling disengaged and depleted.

My 5 Reasons for disconnecting at night and on the weekend:

1. My son
2. My partner
3. Myself
4. My mental well being
5. My love for what I do

While I have spent the better part of the last 10 years being as available as I possible could for my clients I realized I was doing them a disservice by being too available.  I never gave myself opportunity to recharge, to have some peace, to think, to engage with my family without worry. I’ve coached my clients about this for the better part of the last 6 years but I never applied the principle to myself, probably because I never had kids but in today’s day and age where we so quickly want responses I believe its time to set some boundaries for myself. To get reengage with my business.

I have disconnect for the past several weekend and have found that I’m more excited to return to work on Monday. I’m excited about the idea of bringing on new clients again and I am actually creative again because I’ve taken the time to give myself a break of the life of entrepreneur. I challenge you to do the same. I challenge you to find your reasons and disconnect on the weekend. I challenge you to create hours for yourself and have a set time to be done with work.

I know it will be hard as an entrepreneur to turn that switch off but I promise you it will be worth it.