Here are 7 tricks to balancing work and home.

As mothers, we worry about work-life balance, hoping we’ve spent enough time with our kids. Yet along the way we meet so many moms who navigate changes with endless grace.What do they know that we don’t?

Cali Williams Yost — an expert on workplace flexibility and author of, “TWEAK IT” –actually studied these people. She found they focus on making deliberate but small adjustments in their routines so work and life fit together. And she calls them “tweaks.”

“With the smallest investment in right places,” she says. “You can radically transform the quality of your relationships and your life.”

Yost gives us seven tiny changes that can produce huge results when we’re trying to fit everything into a single day.

• Update priorities weekly. Give yourself 15 minutes to think about gaps in your schedule. If you want more sleep, then you need to start go to bed at a certain time. If you want to work toward landing a new job, spend 10 minutes updating your LinkedIn profile.

• Question your daily choices. If wellness is a priority, you have ask yourself, “Do I really need to work through lunch or should I go for a walk?’’

• View adjustments as temporary. You are less likely to meet resistance at work and home if changes are short term.

• Communicate and win. One of the most important small actions you can take to make work and life run smoothly is to share your intentions with the right people. Yost says if you plan a long weekend away, coordinate with your co-workers or staff. They may not have otherwise known to cover for you.

• Build your army. Luly Balepogi, founder of Luly B Inc, who mentors mom entrepreneurs, found those best at work-life balance usually have a team behind them to help. Balepogi, for one, brought her mother and mother-in-law on board to help with afterschool activities, and now she has three extra hours of office time.

• Avert a crisis before it happens. Yost says it’s better to be proactive, not reactive when weaving small chaos preventing measures into the schedule. Think: a pediatrician who opens early, late and on weekends; a meeting with a geriatric care manager.

• Forget perfection. Aim for 100 percent but make 70 percent of your week’s targeted actions your goal. Even 50 percent is better than nothing.

Cindy Krischer Goodman

Workplace columnist Cindy Krischer Goodman is CEO of BalanceGal, a provider of news and advice on how to balance work and life. Her work appears in newspapers across the country including: The Miami Herald, The Chicago Tribune, The News & Observer and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. CEmail her at balancegal@gmail.com or visit worklifebalancingact.com.