So there’s a thing called Work-Life balance. It’s this idea that your personal life (family) and work life should be balanced well. Since we started J2, work-life balance has been a struggle for me. If you love your family and hate work, society calls that normal. If you love your job and hate your family, you’re a workaholic and should seek counseling. But, if you love your family and your job, you have a work-life balance issue. But don’t call the doc just yet. I know plenty of people have work-life balance issues. The problem comes when you don’t try to adjust it.
See, I love my wife and little girls like crazy while at the same time I love the work I do. My struggle comes because I go #allin. When I’m working, I’m pushing hard, putting in long hours, and making things happen. Like right now at 11pm writing this blog post. Then the weekend comes and I try to go all in on family. So, the idea is to develop a schedule or routine that allows me to go all in on work while I’m at work, and all in on family while I’m with them. We’ve worked at that for the last 3 or 4 years. As you can tell it’s a work in progress, trying to figure out what works best.
There’s another idea, which I believe gets ignored. Seasons. I think life goes in seasons. Gone are the days of graduating from college and working the same 9-5 job for 40 years, then retiring in the sunshine state. In this millennial driven workforce, we are working in seasons. We are starting projects that take a lot of time and commitment. So we go into overtime during that project. Then we may follow that with a season of rest. My brother, Erik, recently had a great 2 week season of rest touring Europe. Now that he’s back, our company is in a season of extended hours, harder work, more attention to details, and much higher stakes. We’re #allin. I think this type of thing happens a lot, but if we’re not careful and mindful of what season we’re in, our overtime season can take over and we lose balance.
So, be aware of what season you’re in. Overtime or rest? You need both. Find mini seasons of rest each week. You can’t stay in overtime season too long or you’ll get burnt out (or your family will).