I wanted to jot down some things we (less everything) work towards to keep our personal lives in balance with our work. Our industry is unique in the fact we love what we do and sometimes we feel it’s acceptable to work 80+ hours. While some weeks you must kick out some work, overall it’s not a positive thing to be that unbalanced. In the past months, we have added a few company rules.
1) First, no one is productive for 80 hours a week (except Steve, he’s a freaking machine, 110), something isn’t right if you spend that much time working. If you can’t make a living working less than 80 hours a week, you need to change careers.
2) Around 5pm you must be looking for a place to pause work. Many of us have small kids and they go to bed early. If you must finish a task do it once they’re in bed. During evening hours, family time is #1, work is far down the list of priorities. We usually do three to five hours of more work after the kids go to sleep
3) Dinner time is important. This follows the first rule of stopping around 5pm, take a few hours, play with your kids, interact with them. Talk to your wife, family, parents something but get away from the computer and be social with the people important to you. Talk to someone besides your co-workers.
4) Leave the house. It’s imperative that you get out of the house/office or place you work. Personally I have been trying to go to beautiful places, parks, lakes, any place I can take pictures of. It’s another form of creativity that lets my mind feel free. Creativity isn’t something I can turn off but I can be creative without staring at pixels.
5) Try to do something to get the blood pumping. I’m fat and lazy but I try to ride my bike around the neighborhood while pulling my son in his baby trailer. This is a time that I can have complete silence and clear my thoughts, plus sweat a little.
Remember that work is your tool to make money, it’s not your life. Money is only a temporary justification for not being there for the people you love. Time is fleeting, memories are priceless, choose life over work any chance you get. As long as you get your work done. ;)
If you wanted it to build a product you’d find a way to get time to work on it. If you really wanted to start that new hobby you’d sacrifice something to find the time and money to do it.
I'll define a "Wannabe Entrepreneur" as someone who has never made money from their businesses. Here are the different types of wannabes.
In the past few years I've built go-carts, built a 200+ sq ft workshop, written several eBooks. How do I create a life where I have time to work on side projects?
LessEverything is a company who has bootstrapped their way into profitablity. It hasn't been easy, but here's how we did it. Get this free four-part course.