Lets state the obvious here. If you’re looking for a career or business opportunity with “work life balance”, you’ve already lost. The implied message by searching for this position is that you view work and life as separate. You don’t like your work.
If you don’t like your work, you’ll be putting in the minimum, barely scraping by. You slowly work up to a middling position that pays $150K per year. You’ve set out on a path that will be painful (long-term) once you hit the decade mark in work experience.
The Outline
60+ hours a week: This is generally the threshold where people can decide if they like their work. Remember, there are only 3 careers worth pursuing otherwise you’re better off starting a business (again in something you can scale). Is it better to put in the long hours when you are young or when you’re older and playing catch up against the people who are already in the industry? The answer of course, is when you are young.
60 hours a week will break down as follows. In at 8am out at 8pm like clock work. 4 weekdays during the week you spend 1 hour at the gym after work. One night a week (choose Thursday) you socialize to avoid becoming a type A boring person and prevent yourself from developing unhealthy *black out* drinking habits. You read on your free time Friday night and you set aside saturday night for fun. Finally, Sunday should be spent on new hobbies, new businesses and any other way you can reinvest in yourself.
But what if you work 80 hours a week in investment banking for 2-3 years? This is easy, you can maintain the same schedule. Do not allow people to trick you into believing it is not doable. You are only 22 years old.
You simply leave for the gym when the office is empty, work longer on Monday-Wednesday and slot out Sunday for additional work as well. Pay your dues over 2-3 years so you don’t have to be average like most people in their 30s. There is almost nothing worse than having $100-150K in the bank at 30. You’re starting from scratch again.
Work is Life: Generally, people will work for 40-50 hours a week. If they spend 56 hours a week sleeping (8 hours a night) and another 50 hours working… That leaves only 62 hours a week for “life” which will include chores, commuting and other miscellaneous tasks. Now let’s see what happens if you enjoy your work… You’ve now increased the amount of life you’re living by over 30%. Instead of burning 106 hours a week doing things you must do/don’t enjoy… You now spend just 56 hours a week sleeping and the rest of your time is filled with fun activities.
Run the math.
Does it make more sense to spend 2/3 of your life doing things you enjoy or only 1/3? The clear answer is 2/3. Work life separation is for people who believe everyone hates their job. This is false.
Balance: If life is work and work is part of your life, how do you find balance and avoid becoming a high strung hyper competitive person? The answer is in the remainder of your *personal* life.
As soon as you step away from the computer, away from the meeting and away from your company issued smartphone… Rest all thoughts. The key to balance if you have a stressful job is to realize that you cannot change the circumstances from your bed, at the gym or at dinner. The following should be your mantra.
“Ignore what you can’t control, take action when you can and learn to know the difference between the two.”
You will be able to track down role models for work life balance very quickly. If they work in intense professions or run competitive businesses and do not speak of them… they are in balance. They also exhibit emotional control.
Notice the definition of balance is different, work is still part of your life, you simply do not think about it when you cannot take action.
Years of Balance: Finally the bigger question is… “How do you maximize the amount of years in your life?” The answer is to slowly take your foot off the gas as you exceed the age of 35-40 years old. Instead of being high strung, you allow for a slow deceleration in total hours spent on work.
(Note: As many of our readers know, retirement is a scam/myth since life at 60 versus 35 are night and day. Don’t even get us started on the government’s ability to raise the retirement age)
The key is to find a life balance between ages 25 and 55. You want to grow a business/career you enjoy over the first decade, become more efficient over the second decade and begin coasting during the third decade. Pretty simple outline that can be adjusted as a reader sees fit. If you’re on track to be worth a couple of million dollars by 35, this is going to be a no brainer operation for you. While you’ll enjoy your work, the dues have already been paid and the need to work 80+ hours a week will be far back in your rear view mirror.
The Excuses
With the answer to the “work life balance” question out of the way the following people will attempt to send you on the wrong path.
Live it Up in Your 20s Guy: This person comes in three forms 1) person who had no options in the first place, 2) person who believes he can catch up later and 3) person who believes he’s too talented to work 60+ hours a week. All of these personas should be ignored.
If you don’t believe that this group should be ignored, look ahead 5-6 years and see what questions they are asking.
- “Does money help get girls”, you only ask if you’ve never had any
- “How did/do you make $X per year”, doesn’t bother asking what skills are useful or where to obtain them in an intelligent manner
- “How can I get into X industry”, thought he was special so he never did any research
All of their questions shift to income production since they didn’t put the big blocks up early. It won’t be a pretty future as the result is “cost cutting” where they develop a scarcity mindset to save money (see frugality not minimalism). If you take nothing from any post in this blog, do not listen to any of the these people.
Everyone Hates Their Work: This was mentioned above and is entirely false. This excuse suggests that a person has no interests or passions… At all. If you’ve gone through life and have zero interests, then you have lived an extremely dull and boring life. No doubt about it.
In addition, the implied strategy by this group of people is to minimize the number of hours of work. They will toss around the phrase “most dollars per hour” as the holy grail. We’ve explained ad nauseam how this doesn’t work and you will find that the vast majority of the middle class agree with the thought process.
It Is All Luck: Finally we come to the third most common excuse “all of life is luck”. Once you go through all the reasons why they should have made better decisions, instead of taking ownership, they will claim success is all luck. Considering that luck is simply a function of capabilities and timing, they missed out on hundreds of opportunities. They never developed the capabilities to take advantage of the situation in the first place.
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End of rant.
Let’s get to work! Well, more appropriately, let’s get to LIVING.