How to Improve Work-Life Balance for Finance Professionals

If you've been following along, this is the third blog post in my series on work-life balance.

In the first post, I shared why I don't think balance is a static state that you achieve and then maintain forever. Instead, it's an ongoing process of adjusting to changing circumstances.

In the second post, I shared why not all work-life imbalance is bad. Some imbalance is intentional and meaningful. Some isn't. The key is understanding the difference.

Now, I want to talk about the practical side of balance.

How do you actually go about improving work-life balance?

In This Blog Post

How Fresh Starts Improve Work-Life Balance

A fresh start feels good for a reason.

Whether it's a new year, a new quarter, a Monday morning, or a brand-new planner, it creates a natural pause point. It gives us a chance to reflect, reset, and decide what we want to do differently.

That's valuable.

Many positive changes start this way.

The Problem Isn’t the New Routine

The problem is that we often expect the fresh start itself to do the heavy lifting.

We buy the new planner. We create the new plan. We map out the perfect week.

Then reality hits.

A stakeholder needs something. A meeting gets added. A deadline moves. A team member needs support.

The day doesn't go according to plan.

When that happens? You assume the plan failed.

But that's not actually the problem.

The problem is believing that work-life balance comes from creating the perfect plan rather than learning how to continuously adjust the plan as circumstances change.

As a finance professional, you know this intuitively at work.

• Budgets are set.

• Priorities shift.

• Forecasts get updated.

• Plans get adjusted.

Yet many of us expect our personal plans to survive reality untouched.

They won't.

And they don't need to.

Four Steps to Improve Work-Life Balance for Finance Professionals

The good news is that improving work-life balance doesn't require a complete overhaul.

In fact, finance professionals already know how to do this.

Every day at work, we evaluate results, identify issues, test solutions, and make adjustments. Yet, we rarely apply that same process to how we work and live.

Instead, we look for the perfect planner, routine, app, or a fresh start.

But work-life balance isn't improved through one big change. More often, it comes from paying attention to what's happening right now, making a few intentional adjustments, evaluating the results, and repeating the process.

Simple.

Not always easy.

But incredibly effective over time.

Here's where I suggest you start.

Step 1: Understand How You're Spending Your Time

Before you can improve anything, you need to understand what's happening right now.

When clients start paying attention to how they spend their time, they're often surprised by what they discover.

Meetings that weren't necessary right now.

Reactive work consuming large portions of the day.

Very little time spent on deep work and their own key deliverables.

A lack of planning, thinking, reviewing, or prioritizing time.

I experienced this myself during my finance career.

One example was review work.

For years, I wasn't intentionally scheduling review time into my workday. As a result, reviews often spilled into evenings and weekends.

At first, it felt like a workload problem.

But when I looked more closely, I realized the bigger issue was how I was reviewing.

My objective wasn't simply to ensure work was accurate and met expectations.

My objective had somehow become making sure it was written the way I would have written it.

That's a common trap for managers.

It creates bottlenecks, rework, and a significant investment of your time with very little incremental value added. I won’t even start on how this makes your team members feel…

Once I became aware of what was happening, I was able to make adjustments.

But awareness had to come first.

Step 2: Decide How You'd Rather Spend Your Time

This is the step that many people never slow down long enough to do.

You know you're frustrated, overwhelmed, or working too much.

But you haven't clearly defined what you're trying to create instead.

Interestingly, when I work with finance professionals, they aren't usually asking for dramatically fewer responsibilities.

More often, they want more time for:

• deep work and their own key deliverables

• personal time

• family time

And even those things aren't really the goal. The goal is what they create with more of their time back.

A workout isn't just a workout. It's a reminder of what you're capable of.

Dinner with your family isn't just dinner. It's connection.

A hobby isn't just a hobby. It's fun, creativity, flow, or getting lost in something you enjoy.

When we create a vision for work and life in coaching, we're often talking less about activities and more about the feelings people want to experience.

The activities are just one way of creating those feelings.

Step 3: Identify What's Getting in the Way

This is where the real work begins.

Most finance professionals I work with are capable of creating a plan.

The challenge comes when reality inevitably disrupts it.

A new request arrives. A leader needs something. A meeting gets added. An unexpected issue arises.

Suddenly, the entire day gets reshuffled.

What often happens next is that people abandon the plan altogether.

The day becomes reactive. Then the week becomes reactive. Then the month becomes reactive.

Eventually they conclude that planning doesn't work.

But the issue isn't usually the plan.

The issue is the assumption that every new request automatically deserves priority over what was already planned.

Or the inability to stop, reassess, and intentionally decide what matters most right now.

Work-life balance doesn't require perfect execution.

It requires frequent reassessment.

Step 4: Evaluate, Adjust, and Repeat

This is the step that most people want to skip.

They want the perfect system. The perfect planner. The perfect routine.

Something that solves the problem once and for all.

But balance doesn't work that way.

One client I worked with believed their workload was the primary issue.

As we worked together, we discovered that a significant opportunity existed in how they were spending their time.

Specifically, they needed to become clearer about the leader they wanted to be.

Once they did, they spent less time managing and more time leading.

They stopped becoming the bottleneck. There was less rework. Their team became more capable and accountable.

They created more space for their own deep work and key deliverables.

As a result, they felt more accomplished during the workday because they were delivering what their stakeholders expected from them - not just what they expected from their team.

And because work became more intentional, they also created more time for themselves outside of work.

The workload hadn't disappeared.

But their experience of it changed.

Applying Continuous Improvement to Yourself

One thing I've noticed after more than two decades in finance is that finance professionals don't lack discipline.

They also don't lack the ability to improve systems.

We're constantly evaluating results, identifying issues, making adjustments, and improving processes.

We do it every day.

What many haven't done is apply that same continuous improvement mindset to themselves.

Work-life balance is no different.

Observe. Evaluate. Adjust. Repeat.

Not once. Continuously.

Final Thoughts on Work-Life Balance for Finance Professionals

If there's one thing I hope you take away from this blog post, it's this:

Work-life balance isn't something you achieve.

It's something you practice.

No planner, routine, app, or fresh start will permanently solve it for you on its own.

Those things can absolutely help. In fact, they can be a great place to start.

But lasting change comes from paying attention to how you're spending your time, deciding what matters most, making adjustments when circumstances change, and repeating that process over and over again.

So, before you try to overhaul everything, start here:

Track your time for a week. All you need is a blank sheet of paper or fresh note on your phone. Reflect over lunch – what did I do in every 30-minute (or so) increment? Then reflect again at the end of your work day.

Pay attention.

Then ask yourself:

• Where did I spend my time intentionally?

• Where did I spend it reacting?

• And where could I have made a different choice?

You might discover that there is more room for what matters most than you think.

Get Help Putting This Into Practice

If this resonated with you, don't start by trying to change everything all at one.

Start by becoming more intentional about how you spend your time – week by week.

That's exactly why I created my weekly planning system.

It helps you connect your day-to-day decisions to your bigger goals so you're not just reacting to whatever shows up on your calendar.

Use it to:

• Identify what matters most this week

• Create space for your highest priorities

• Evaluate how your time is actually being spent

• Make adjustments as circumstances change

Because work-life balance isn't created by a planner.

But a planner can be a valuable tool for practicing the habits that create it.

Grab the Plan Your Week Template.

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Read the Rest of this Series

If this post resonates with you, you might also enjoy the other posts in this series:

Not all Work-Life Imbalance is Bad

Not all imbalance is a problem. Sometimes working harder or spending more time on something is a meaningful investment in your career, health, relationships, or personal growth. Learn how to distinguish between intentional imbalance and the kind that quietly pulls you away from the life you want to create.

Is Work-Life Balance in Finance Even Possible? Realistically

A more realistic way to think about balance in a demanding career—and why balance is created through how you operate within your circumstances, not by waiting for perfect conditions.