There are millions of people just like you, so don't feel like you are alone in your frustrations. Achieving a harmonious balance between the demands of home and the demands of a career can be especially difficult, but some people do manage to do it. These people focus on specific areas to balance work and life successfully.

First of all, if you need to get a better grip on separating your work and family life, then you need to set up clear boundaries for each area. This means that all of your family and personal business is conducted on family or personal time, and all of your career work is conducted at work. This sounds simple enough, but how many of us have paid our bills at our desk, then caught up on paperwork when the kids are asleep? Too many.

This is the wrong approach. When the boundaries are blurred between work and personal lives, it can become chaotic. Set up specific plans for yourself and keep focused on the job at hand, whether it is preparing for the big meeting at work, or cleaning the kitchen at home. Multi-tasking is fine, but do not play too many roles at the same time; otherwise, you are bringing home to work or bringing work to home.

Secondly, decide how to more efficiently get everything done in each area of your life. If there are numerous household chores, but there are also grocery shopping, dance classes, and soccer games, then you need a schedule of when things are going to be done. The importance of a schedule, calendar, or some tracking device for all of the activities cannot be overlooked.

Being able to eyeball the activities, whether you have it listed on the refrigerator or diagrammed on a white board, can make it much easier to cross off the

completed items and focus on one activity at a time. This is so important for time management and organization. Often, when our lives are chaotic, we leave too many things undone. Stop doing that, and you will be on your way to a point where you can definitively say you know how to balance work and life successfully.

Remember, too, that it is difficult or one person to manage it all on their own, all of the time. Delegation is a skill too many people neglect to hone; the result is one person doing everything while the rest of the group stands around. Recognize the need for help, and ask for it. If home is so busy that there is no time to clean, do not stay up late to dust; hire outside help. OR better yet, give the kids some chores, with clear guidelines and expectations. At work, don't be a "yes-man" or a "yes-woman".

If there are projects piling up on your desk, and your boss is asking for more, tell him no! It is okay to do that once in awhile, especially if you rationally explain that more work will compromise the integrity of the other projects you have yet to wrap up.

So that is the key to achieving a harmonious balance between work and life. Recognize that no one person can accomplish everything, and keep your roles separated. Plan your activities, both at work and at home, with an easy to manage organizational system, and stick to it. Soon, you will be the poster child for how to balance work and life successfully.