The work/life balance is one of the crucial time management skills shared by those who are most successful in business. Knowing how to manage time for yourself is not selfish. On the contrary, "me time" boosts your general well being, self esteem, happiness levels and quality of life. Sadly most people are ineffectively managing their time at work, so they take it home with them. Then it's not just the individual that starts to suffer, but so will family, friends and social life as the domino effect of "not enough hours in the day" takes its toll.

We've all heard of the criticism when someone is said to be "married" to their job. Coming home late, not seeing enough of the family and going to work early in the morning does not necessarily mean that someone is working harder than a 9-to-5'er, but could mean that they are ineffectively managing their time at work. So how do you prevent this happening to you?

Technology, wonderful as it is, can be to blame for some of us taking our work home with us. In past times, you went home and thus became uncontactable, short of your boss making the journey to come to your house and ask you to come in for a while. Mobile phones, Blackberries and pagers changed all that. Whereas before, a company would be forced to work around a solution without a certain member of staff present, these days all it takes is a quick call to our mobile or firing off an email... and what do we do? We answer it, using up our own time to solve a work-related problem because we feel obligated to, or the company gave you the phone in the first place.

Let's face it, unless you are a doctor or someone else who NEEDS to be on 24/7 call in case of emergency, we can separate our home and work life through technology. Have your own personal mobile, separate from your work one - which can be switched off when you get home. Let your employees or colleagues know that you must only be contacted at home in a real emergency, not to ask something that can be easily solved by someone still in the office. The same goes for email - reading non-urgent work emails at home can only make you tempted to answer them.

If you are self-employed, the tables turn and your time management can go in reverse. If your family are at home, then they could eat into your work time, thus making you work more hours than you should, because you don't feel that you've done enough. If you do work at home, make sure that one room is a designated "work" zone, and anyone else in the household should respect that space and not interrupt your designated working hours unless absolutely necessary.

Home work of a different kind can also be a factor in not managing your work/life balance. Offering to take a report home to read is a classic example of work time eating into your home life. Once in a while, it's fine (and good practise) to be prepared for the following day - but if you're doing it often, perhaps you should ask yourself why you feel obliged.

The same goes for staying late - do you feel like you'd be viewed as a slacker if you left at 5pm on the dot? Do you find it difficult to say "no" to helping other colleagues so you only get your own workload done much later in the day, causing you to stay longer than you should?

Sometimes "me time" requires a little bit of assertiveness training, too. Time management itself is a skill that is learned and does not often come naturally in today's hectic work environment. If yours needs tuning, get trained up, and claim back some of your time that is rightfully yours!