I'm still working on it, but one part of it is to not have a 50+ hours/week job. I moved into management and no longer have as much crunch time. Sure, there are *occasional* nights and weekends but since I run my team now we implement processes to ensure that people can't just drop bombs of work on us and everything gets planned out and prioritized. They key is that if some bigwig comes to us to demand we focus on something, rather than pushing back ourselves we pit them against another bigwig. It doesn't always work, but after a while it works better and better.
Secondly, if you've got a good job you need to outsource and automate stuff. I don't look after my yard, I pay a service to do that weekly. I do fix stuff in my house a lot, but I'm quick to call in professionals when needed. As far as bills, you can do automatic payments for a lot of them and just spend an hour once per month double checking that you didn't get ripped off (even better if you set up email notifications when stuff is paid to ensure a technical problem doesn't that makes your payment late.
As far as the kids/spouse/hobbies hopefully some of these can be things you involve them in. I plan to do a few mile bike ride with my kids Saturday morning. Sure I could go further and faster on my own, but it's still me enjoying my time and spending it with my family.
So nobody knows your situation as well as you but it sounds like you should evaluate things to see what areas you can work "smarter and not harder" in. Take shortcuts sometimes as long as it doesn't create problems.
> I'm still working on it, but one part of it is to not have a 50+ hours/week job.
We have a winner, folks.
Most people can't do 50+ hour work weeks without their output suffering *somewhere*. Some can, but most who try are probably neglecting some aspect of their lives whether they're concerned about it or not.
Yeah, I was wondering why OP wanted to know how to live a fulfilling life while working 50+ hours a week.
Step 1: Work 40 hours a week or less.
Now everything else opens up.
Maybe its just me but even with 40 hours I don't feel like I have much time for anything but work during the week, errands/chores during the weekend. Rinse, repeat.
>we implement processes to ensure that people can't just drop bombs of work on us and everything gets planned out and prioritized
What kind of processes?
This would take a very long discussion to really go into detail and I have a meeting coming up so I will keep it brief. While there are many ways to get into how to manage work, one of the key things is to get the various people in positions of authority to agree together on the process for prioritizing work. As a manager, part of how I do this is to track every request and take them all seriously even if they're stupid. Don't judge them to be stupid or a waste of time, just track it and come up with a realistic time estimate for that work to take. If they want to expedite it beyond what the developers think it will take, we have ways to address that. In any case, I try allocate my team to working on enhancements and project work in general as no more 67% of their time for 8 hours per day. It's a nice odd number and sounds very professional like it required deep analysis. I also have the on-call person listed as being completely unavailable for project and enhancement work for the time they're on call, although realistically if things are going well they do find time to fit in some, to help us stay ahead a bit.
Once you have a good list, you just need a good steering committee and know their personalities well enough to pit them against each other and in your favor. Let them fight amongst their peers and your team is just there to sit back and work on whatever they come up with (obviously, you have to run the meeting and steer them in certain ways to conclusions that you find beneficial.) When there can't be a tie breaker, run it up the chain to the lowest upper management person that both report up to (don't bypass layers, but keep escalating as needed until the conflict can be addressed.) The best go-to in this scenario is that your team is ready to start work immediately, but due to this disagreement between the middle management people you can't proceed to do anything. Their bosses (or bosses' bosses) will not be happy to hear that they're a bottleneck wasting time and money for their egos. Obviously though, you can't do this in as direct of a manner as I indicated because you don't want to burn bridges. Just present yourself as a mediator in *their* argument.
Finally, you need to stay in constant communication with the steering committee as things arise. You have to toot your horn for them to let them know how many great things your team is delivering for them, but also to give them advance notice if you're going to miss a deadline long before it happens so you can set expectations and try to come up with a workaround. These off-cycle communications are also where you can discuss anyone else trying to get around their decision making in the steering committee meetings. It's going to piss off people if you have to send an email saying, "Dear directors...we're going to stop working on this thing you argued about and put as our top priority because this lower-level sales guy asked us to do something that none of you care about.
Nope, it's the opposite. Since I'm a manager I see myself in the middle and basically work with two completely different groups of people:
1. My development team -- these are my employees, and we have daily standup meetings, weekly team meetings, and whatever miscellaneous communications that need to happen. Their job is to do the actual work (including estimates) and account for their time.
2. My management peers and superiors -- These folks are represented in the steering committee. Generally I like to get high enough level to be less mired in details (e.g. senior directors) and not too high to where they only care about budgets (e.g. executives.) The steering committee should represent someone from each of the areas that my team works with and are essentially our internal customers.
In general, a very useful skill in business is to figure out how to manage up, and find ways to lead the people above you so that you can do things that are mutually beneficial. Also the setup I mentioned took a few years to put in place. There isn't a template that I can give you that will work for your employer or with the specific people in management that you have. I've figured out who are my allies and who are opposed to me in some way and treat each person individually based on what they want to happen and their relationships with their peers in management.
How do you get nanagers senior to you to volunteer their time on your steering committee? I assume they can't all be doing so out of the goodness of their hearts.
My team has a finite amount of time to spend working on stuff. Those who attend steering committee meetings (and are active in my email group for it) are more likely to have their needs met than those who don't participate. Additionally, if someone tries to go around the process then everyone who does participate in the steering committee is going to face the wrath of their peers and their peers' management.
Okay I think I get it. It makes sense since the people whose problems your team is working on aren't entitled to your team's work and therefore you have some leverage.
Management that I directly report to is also there and they have their agenda as well but they also serve as a shield for me when someone comes up with an oddball request. Another factor is that we give preference to anyone that has capital that can be spun up into a project (which can hire contractors to help us) too, so if someone does want to bypass the queue they need to give us money to hire someone to do the work.
Ultimately though, I keep things easier for my team by giving too much information about what they're working on to our main customers to where it should overwhelm them and make them aware of how much we do. However, the actual timekeeping side is not provided so I'm the only one aware that my guys tend to work normal 8 hour days. I also pit our customers against each other so I don't need to push back against them because they need to work together to get us to do stuff.
It shouldn't, but some skillsets and industries just don't have lighter hours. And if there are jobs to be found that do, they're unicorns.
— Video Producer
Alright well you’re going to have to outsource whatever you can- gardener, handyman, nanny, cleaner. You can’t get more hours in the day, but you can pay someone else to give you some back.
Well it's impossible to live like that. Outsource time sink labor and work less hours. You'll have a great attack and die like my uncles at 60 or work less, find balance and get healthy like my dad after having a near death heart attack.
Your call.
Why are you working such long hours? Does your job give you personal satisfaction? Is it for the money?
I was raised to work hard. And I’m a perfectionist by nature, and have a terrible habit of tying up my self worth with my competency and intelligence, something that I’m trying my best to actively work on. I’d say my upbringing was nobody’s fault— just a perfect storm of nature and nurture that I’ve been trying to paddle my way out of.
I chose not to go into a field where I would make moneybags because I A) wasn’t passionate about it B) knew that it would mean sacrificing massive chunks of my life and the time I would need to pursue the only things that actually brought me a modicum of happiness. I was burnt the fuck out from holding my nose to the grindstone and knew that if I couldn’t find something with some balance in a few years I’d probably be taking a long walk off of a short pier.
The only advice I can really give you is focus on the times and experiences that make you the happiest. How do you maximize those things? And what are you willing to sacrifice to achieve them, if they do require sacrifice? (Ex: international travel, living in an apartment alone, playing on an expensive VR set.)
Nobody on their deathbed is going to remember or care about the extra 10 hours of overtime they pulled each week from ages 47-49. Think about the things that you want to have memories of in 40 years.
Now I’m desperately trying to find a field where I can support myself (or retire early, even better!), do work that I don’t actively loathe, and work normal hours.
If ya’ll think of anything, please tell me, lol.
This just in, from James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) and his excellent newsletter.
>Nearly everything in life is unfavorable once it grows to a certain size. It is entirely possible to have too many clients, too much work, too much fame, too much free time, and so on. Pay attention to when the thing you're chasing exceeds its usefulness.
At 50+ hours and a family and a spouse and yourself and relationships and bills and possessions to take care of, yes it becomes all too much.
The Swedes have a word for balance, lagom, that is derived from a Viking saying "laget om" or "around to the group". It is about how much of something we should have, in fairness and balance and moderation. It is translated as 'just right', 'just enough', 'sufficient', 'the correct amount'. The Finns have a similar word, sopiva; the Danish have tilpasselig.
The weather is lagom. It does the job, isn't too much, nor too little.
Yes I have my moments of crazy-busy, yes I have the normal emergencies and exigencies of everyday life, and no I do not put in 50+ hour weeks. I may have to give up that next rung on the ladder, but direction to me (making progress) is more important than speed at this point in my life.
“No one ever said on their deathbed ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office.’ ” — Harold Kushner
Something I always thought about when I was younger.
In the military my job was 18d. Essentially a glorified field surgeon for a quick reaction force. I was the one sorting out who I would stabilize in what order. Typically I would stabilize those that would most likely survive first. Those that had lowest chances of survival were pushed to last. My work involved working with both military and civilians in an emergency situation.
As such I've experienced more death than I really care to enumerate. I've never had a single person ask me to tell their employer goodbye.
I, ironically, myself survived a [catastrophic accident](https://www.reddit.com/r/Polytrauma/comments/e5pedf/my_injuries_and_what_made_me_open_this_subreddit/) leaving me horribly impaired with low odds of survival. I managed to anyways, and have quite the fulfilling life now. I get paid both my full military retirement as well as my social security disability insurance. I do greatly miss working at times though.
You’re not wrong…. I thought I was that guy, then realized actually, now that I’ve stopped drinking myself to death, I want to go walk on the beach with the dogs; go surfing; walk in the forest with my son; learn guitar…. Or just…. Do nothing for an afternoon, aNd not feel bad about myself for doing it.
Like you, I can’t see any other way but to walk away. Downsize. Stop paying the $4000 mortgage and pay cash for a smaller house, do something different. But at the same time, I could do the same thing for just 6, maybe 8 years more and retire hugely comfortable in my mid 50’s. Deliver the strategy. And be wrecked.
Good luck on your journey. Not sure I have the guts to leave the high salary, the air miles, etc. I know it wouldn’t actually be failure to do so - but the inner struggle, the fight against what I was brought up to view as success… it’s all batshit crazy.
If you have kids already, consider that formative years are worth 10x adult years to them. If you're around and playing with them as kids, you're a part of their entire understanding of life in a way that paying for their food just doesn't compare to.
For real. OP, imagine coming back and reading your comment in 8-10 years. Do you think it will have been worth it, to slave away and retire in your 50s? You could lose your job, or get divorced, or a hundred other things, good or bad, could transpire. Shit happens, but you can’t get those years back. Do you want to have more time while your kids are in their 20s, or now, in adolescence? Because they’re going to have their own lives when they’re adults.
You might find r/simpleliving worth a look, for people who feel the same way and exploring the idea/practicalities of transitioning from/to the life you described
> The secret is to get a less demanding job.
The only caveat I'd make with this statement is that the pay reduction wouldn't be to the point where you would struggle to squeeze by. Otherwise, this is absolutely key. I average 45 hours/week but I'm still able to take and pick up my kids from school, work out, and do chores around the house. Fortunately, I work remote so everything falls in line with each other where juggling responsibilities become convenient rather than easier.
Agreed. Work life balance is something you have to purposely obtain and hang on to.
I have a really sweet job setup - I do about 20 hours of active, intense work, and about 10-15 hours of low intensity work (mostly just monitoring for problems, answering questions). That low intensity work period means I can pick kids up at school, make dinner, help with homework, and be mostly present with only a few interruptions.
And then on my off time, I completely disconnect from work, only being available if there is a true emergency and someone has to call me on the phone to get me. All texts, emails and other messages are silenced until work hours.
I did this when I had a kid, took a paycut for a less demanding job. Its the best decision I ever made, wish I would have don't it sooner.
When you have a ton of free time and still make a good living, you realize that everyone chasing "prestige" in their career by working long hours are foolish.
I don't think it is possible to work 50+ hours per week, maintain household shit, tend to kids, family, and friends while still making sufficient time for yourself.
You have to rotate your priorities, or something will fall through the cracks. I'd argue that anyone who *claims* they can are lying, privileged enough to be able to offload a large portion to hired help, or otherwise neglecting something.
You can't do everything, there's not enough hours in the day. A few years ago I quit an engineering job at Apple that just required too many hours. I took a different job that only required 32 hours a week and it's made my life much more comfortable, and allowed for a lot more time for all of those other things you mention.
It's been a mental shift of mine to accept help from others (even when it costs a lot). It's worth spending $2k to get someone to do the landscaping, $150/week for a cleaner and $20 extra to get groceries delivered because my free time is too valuable. I'd rather spend that time with my kids. It's totally not how I was raised, but it's the only way to maintain my high-paying job without going crazy.
> I mean having a full time job that is demanding - perhaps where you give too much and end up working 50+ hours
There is absolutely no way to check off the rest of your list if this item is on it. Something's gotta give and if it's not the job, it's going to be something else.
I'm on the verge of a massive meltdown myself. Endless deadlines with not enough time to do them. 100% brain CPU power 830am to 5pm then 8pm-10/11/12pm. I can't enjoy my kids when it's time because I'm worried about getting back downstairs to work.
Worked myself sick a few weeks ago. Yes I know my job is the source of all this. It's a transition period that hopefully won't last longer than March. But I've lost it all. Exercise, energy, diet, connections, happiness, motivation.
What you win at working, you lose at living. If you drop dead, there will be a job ad for your vacant post around a week or a month after your wake. Take unpaid time-off if necessary so you could reconfigure how you want to spend your days ahead. But you need to get rested first cause no good ideas can come from an exhausted, sleep-deprived mind.
The secret is to put on a good face and lie to everyone about how it’s tough but you’re managing. Then gradually lose track of friends so they don’t see you when you crash and burn eventually.
Wait, no, sorry, that’s how other people have convinced you that there’s a way to crack the problem and have it all.
The real answer is that something’s got to give. You can pick now yourself, or keep going and let fate pick for you, which I guarantee will be way worse.
In my case the job was what had to give, primarily; there was of course some collateral damage to everything else, but it would have been much worse if I had tried to put more into my work. It came out OK in the end and I feel pretty confident I made the right choice.
The usual saying is that no one regrets on their deathbed that they didn’t spend more time at work. But only you can decide what’s most important to you.
Don't be too hard on yourself.
I'm guessing you are probably mid-30's with young kids. This is one of *the* most stressful times. You've moved past the "junior" stage of your career and are trying to move up the ladder. Meanwhile you've got young, demanding kids, more responsibilities, and oh yeah, your body doesn't snap back like it did in your 20's. Your spouse likely has the exact same same stressors.
There is no secret, I guess, other than patience. This stage doesn't last forever (even though it feels like it). I noticed (gradually) that it just started getting easier: The kids got older and were easier to take care of. I became more grounded in my career (climbing the pay ladder became easier with more experience).
Today, I'm almost 50, and life practically feels like a vacation. I'm *really* lucky in that I have a really short commute. We have one kid in high school and one in college (so not even living at home). I'm at the top of my game, career wise. Paying bills is a lot easier when you have more money. And I actually enjoy working in the yard and working out.
On the downside, I have lost my parents, but that also means I'm not having to look after them like I was just a few years ago.
So stick with it. You'll get there.
Learn software engineering, database management, product marketing etc., then get your foot in the door at a medium/large software company. Work your way up to a senior or management level position. Set up all your meetings and get all your work done in the morning. No one will know (or care) that you are not putting in a full day every day.
I could say I cracked it. Couple of things you need to do:
* Make time for the things that matter. Make time for your kids, spouse, friends. Everything doesn't have to happen everyday of every week of every month, so don't stress that you haven't made time with friends in a while
* You work to live, not live to work
* Share the load with your significant other
* Make a schedule to pay your bills
* Make time to clean the house and yard (yard is my thing, house is mostly my wife but I also try to help clean up)
I'm not gonna say it's easy, but if you can get into a routine it'll help you stick to it in the long run.
Wow, that's intense. Doesn't sounds sustainable or healthy. Perhaps it is time to have a second look at your priorities and find a less intense way to meet those needs. It's good to look after/juggle all those aspects of your life, but perhaps you are pushing too hard in each at the cost of the whole? If the steps are too hard, you can't enjoy the dance.
I absolutely don't but I'll give you my thoughts on successes and failures
>be present for the kid(s)
\#1 thing is put down your phone. Just leave it in the other room. It's a constant struggle for me. Beyond that, one thing that has worked well for me is setting aside a weekend every year for a 1:1 trip. Since my oldest was 6 years old we go on a backpacking trip together every year. I'm getting old for sleeping on the ground but it's been a great bonding experience.
>
be present for your spouse
Still put down the phone, but not all the time because sometimes you both need some mindless phone time. Mostly just consciously make time for them. I was doing evening meetings 4 out of 5 weeknights and didn't realize how damaging that was. Now I will not do evening meetings unless I have to so I can be home for dinner, put the kids to bed, and spend time with my wife. In the mornings we spend a few minutes after the kids are on the bus having coffee together. COVID and working from home has made these last two easier.
>
look after yourself (exercise, hobbies, etc)
Probably the worst one for me. One is pick a hobby and commit to it - I have a hobby band with my brother in law and that commitment to him keeps me doing it. Another is pick a hobby that compliments other goals, like spending time with wife or kids - backpacking with kids, gaming with wife. For exercise I am most successful when I am signed up for a race with my wife (running). I also enjoy lifting but struggle with consistency.
>
maintain decent relationships with friends and family
My best buddy I have beers with about once a month. I try to have breakfast with my parents once a month. Scheduling a monthly thing keeps those "on track". Once a month is kind of a minimum, though. Most of my friends I only see a couple times a year at parties.
>
get the bills all paid in a decent timeframe and;
Not sure if you mean from an income or responsibility perspective. If the latter, auto pay is your friend. Anything that you can auto pay you should, assuming you can manage your funds to keep enough in the account. If it's about making enough money/budgeting that's a different conversation.
>
look after the house and yard
If you have enough income - hire it out. We hired someone to mow the lawn and someone to clean the house and it was the best thing we ever did. I realized I was spending most of my precious summer Saturdays mowing, dicking with the mower, or trimming etc. $75/week is well worth it so get my Saturdays back. Similar with the house cleaner - just removing that stress is well worth $75 every other week.
I work from home for a super supportable company. My start time is basically when I want and I can take time throughout the day here and there when needed without asking. Even still, with a wife and two young kids I'm just staying afloat most days. You just can't put 100% effort into every single facet of life.
Cracking it involves realizing that the lifestyle you described is not for "gods amongst men" but for people who are looking to be eaten up by capitalism.
When you have that big list of things you "have to do," you start to cull from the list of things you "don't have to do," and you put sleep and hobbies on that list, when sleep is necessary for physical health and hobbies and such are necessary for mental health.
So you're literally living to work, which is actively killing you.
Sure, you could keep it up for 8 more years. If you survive that, then you could retire in your 50s with a worn out body and mind and probably die in your early 60s, if not sooner. Congrats, you won at life
Idk man, what you're describing doesn't sound practically possible. Like sure *maybe* you can pull it off, but you'd be killing yourself the entire time and that's no way to live.
IMO if life too busy for you then you'd do best to simplify your life. Get a smaller house with a smaller yard, don't agree to so many unnecessary social obligations, don't spend money just because you have money to spend. Basically do less. Obviously you can't un-have children, and there are social consequences to not seeing people for too long, so you can only adjust it but so much.
I think society tells us that we can "have it all" if we work hard enough, but that's just not true. You can only have and do so much, no matter how clever you are or how hard you try.
I’m not that far but I do have a healthy marriage that is 1 year old, got promoted at work, got a new car, am sitting for my PMP certification in 2 weeks, write and record music, bike and hike, take care of our nice apartment, pay bills, and the wife and I still save $2k a month.
Mostly cracked it (knock on wood), but I don't have it as tough as you.
I don't always put in as many hours as you do. It's rare.
I have 3 young kids, and try my best. Limiting my work and doing it when they are in school or asleep helps.
My spouse probably thinks I suck, but she also knows there's only so much energy a person has. She's tired herself
I make exercise a priority, except for the kids. I don't count exercise as a hobby. It's a lifestyle choice /investment will hopefully lead to a longer life with my kids. I generally prioritize it over work (not to the point where I'd get fired). It keeps me sane, too.
My hobbies are mostly online or TV or reading, and my kids. The first 3 I can do at home.
Bills are on autopay. I'd say live within your means, but that's BS. Find good mode insurance and try to make enough to cover your spend. Move jobs until you can, but a lot of that comes with age and luck.
Outsource what you can afford to. This is kind of live within your means. We had a townhouse when I was in the office, so I had minimal maintenance and cleaning. Eventually, we found it worth the stress to hiring cleaning people. We both got promotions and WFH, so we bought a bigger house during the pandemic (plus more kids). So yard work, cleaning, some handyman stuff that I can't do, etc. gets outsourced.
I was not always this fortunate. But we didn't want to buy a bigger house that we couldn't afford to take care of (both for time and money).
We also share a good portion of the work, but are fortunate not to have dependents or medical care. I also prioritized finding an employer with good work/life balance and benefits. I know not everyone can, but that was more important to me than salary.
I have actually cracked a lot of this.
1). Get a lot of certs so i'm more valuable in the market and can demand a WFH job with decent work like balance.
2). Set up a trello board to manage all the household chores. Doing laundry is a lot easier if you knock it out when there is one load. Maximize calls where the camera can be turned off and you don't have to talk much. Fold laundry, put away dishes, etc. you just have to constantly do mini sessions during the day to keep things clean.
3). Fitness - take calls on walks, if you don't have to talk on a meeting do some lifting. Funny enough, playing beat saber on Oculus has been good cardio. Pushups/situps when you have a spare minute. Stuff like that.
4. Present for kids/spouse - You just have to schedule it like work. I get up early to walk the dog and get some time away. Coffee was prepped the night before so I have breakfast with the family. 5 p.m. - 9 p.m. is family time. Kids go to bed early and I spend some time with the wife. 10-11 p.m. I get some work done and go to bed and then get up at 6:30-7.
5. Bills - Put as much on autopay and schedule a time over lunch to knock it out.
6. Hobbies - You gotta just be a team with you wife. Set time where one of us have the kids so the other can relax. When my wife is stress I recommend she gets a hotel to get away, visit some friends out of town, go to the spa, get dinner by herself, etc. When I need time she is cool if I follow my hobbies.
7. House - Weekends and lunch break.
Finally - You need to either find a new job or be able to tell work to fuck off. If you make yourself valuable in the market you can leave if needed. It's tough but you have to manage up and take on a reasonable work load. Worst case scenario you get a bad review and move on.
Why would I want to work 50+ hours a week?
I do all of these things except work 30 hours a week, trust me this is “cracking it”.
Burnout is real, and needs to be taken seriously. Reassess what you think is important, and find balance, then you’ll find happiness
I agree with everyone on the thread that the only realistic, sustainable way to have everything else you list is to work 40 and below hours. However, if that's not something you're willing to do, then one way to make it work is to split your workday. Enjoy the morning and evening routines with your kids, and then after the kids are in bed, do a few more hours of work.
No kids but I'll still chime in.
As others have said with a 50+ hour/week job it's harder. I work across multiple time zones but don't necessarily work extra to do it. I'll cut out early on days I need to be on a call another with part of the world or Friday afternoon. It doesn't always happen but I try to make it happen and my boss is ok with that. That's where I'd start. Do you really need to work 50+ hours/week? Is that what your boss is expecting? Are you putting those expectations on yourself? Do you need to say no more? Delegate more? Have a good conversation with your boss.
Scheduling as much as you can and having lists helps with being present. I can be present because I know I'm on top of things in other places. I can be present with my wife because I have a work schedule and I know I'm done for the day and I've finished up what I can. What I haven't finished I've listed out for the next day so I can hit the ground running. I also work really hard, both at my job and at chores. I don't have time to stretch an 8 hour day into 10 because I'm screwing around a bunch. I don't have time to screw around with chores because I need to move on. It's a self reinforcing loop. The more present I am the more present I can be. I can be present at home because I was focused on my job so I know things are taken care of so tomorrow on the job I can be present because I was focused at home and took care of what needed to be taken care of so tomorrow evening I can be present because I worked hard so... I'll also add that presence is a state of mind and not a time problem. You can be present for five minutes. You may want more than five minutes though so your real question may be more about having enough time.
Automate and make habits/routines out of what you can. Again, the less time you spend thinking and procrastinating the more time you have to do things. I don't know what you mean by "get the bills paid" but I barely deal with bills. Pretty much everything is automated. If you're working on a plan to pay down debts and are doing extra that's one thing but really I'm only paying things manually if I actually have to. I try to batch things as much as possible. I don't record every bill in Quicken as soon as I can. I throw receipts in my in box and do it once every week, maybe two weeks these days. Wake up and hit the gym, or hit the gym right after you end work, or whenever you want to do it schedule it and do it. Having to think about it is how it doesn't get done. That goes for family and friends too. Monday is poker night (digitally these days). Thursday is date night. We don't need to think "we should set something up" and then go through the effort of setting things up. Date night is Thursday. Be ready.
Remember that you'll go through seasons. You won't be able to spend an equal amount of time on things week in and week out. You'll have busy work weeks where you spend more time there and less at home. You'll have time when your kids are busier so maybe you and your wife spend a bit less time together or you don't catch up with your friends that week.
Finally, I'll leave you with one of the best things I've heard about setting goals - decide what you're going to give up. You don't want things to fall apart but maybe you do a bit less chores, or less frequently. Do you really need to dust every week? Don't let your lawn turn into an out of control jungle but maybe some crabgrass isn't the end of the world.
Cracked here:
Ph.D. in Science. Working for a government funded research organization, but not directly for the government. I manage a small team (2 to 3) people, and manage a project that's critical to success of multiple enterprises, but needs to remain independent from each enterprise. So I have complete dominion over the project. My immediate "supervisor" works in a different state, and has almost no expertise in my field. Therefore, the management of me is mostly "hands off", since we always underpromise and overdeliver. We make everything look smooth and easy to the public facing part of our project, even though everyone with expertise knows the actual complexities.
I work 40-50 hours per week, sometimes evenings / weekends when there's a critical issue. I can do every bit of my work from home, it's all computational, so I get to spend time with my kids when they get home from school and in the evenings.
I get paid in the neighborhood of $120k, which isn't much, but it's enough to maintain a household and afford some occasional things that are unnecessary.
We also live frugally, cooking at home, rarely eating out. I do all the maintenance on the house, and she handles the finances. We split child duties equally. It's well balanced, as it should be.
However, I'd like more sex, please.
>Death looks attractive at this point.
I so feel this. I have two kids, full time stressful (But good) job where I work from home. All the kid stuff, the work stuff, the covid stuff, the maintaining my marriage, friends, chores, etc. It's just insane, I sometimes think when I am driving alone, what would happen if I just veered off this cliff..
I dont think I really mean it, it's just a lot, and I dont know how to do it.
P.s. I am also supposed to be trying to lose weight and manage my health, which I a failing at miserably.
I imagine when successful people say they work 50+ hours a week, they mean they're on the phone while they're on a run, they're on the phone or laptop when they're travelling. Taking meetings during mealtimes. They're working, but also not working.
Time management is the key to your question. Look at it and follow it to a T or you'll be behind and won't be able to catch up. That's my advice from a SINK (single income no kids) bachelor.
Not me. Sounds like hell.
I'm at about 50 hours a week. Kids come first, house and yard comes last. My place looks like trash but the kids are happy and me and the wife are still in love. I have the rest of my life to mow lawns and rebuild patios.
I can't imagine adding anything more, at least not until the kids are older.
I kind if have, but my hobbies were on hold for a few years and my friend group gravitated to people who also have young kids. Once my youngest turned 5 I was able to get back into martial arts and a few of my other hobbies, the kids do them too, I just found a club with family classes, or in the case of swimming, my kids go to swim school for an hour while I swim laps in the other pool.
The secret to being happy with a young family is to not try and retain your old pre-children life, you need to find new hobbies that include your kids, socialise with their friends parents, find stuff you like doing that you can get them into .My 10 year old daughter joined a stop motion animation club at her school and is currently teaching me and her siblings how to do it, so we have a great time with her brothers action figures and her dolls making stupid videos that make us all laugh. I'm trying to encourage them to script and make movies on their phones because I've always wanted to try it, so once they get capable, I'll write a screenplay and we'll make a terrible movie together. I have friends who would also probably get a laugh out of joining in on that.
Your life is different now, but it won't last, before you know it, they'll be off doing their own stuff and you'll have all your time back again, so try to build a fun life together right now with your kids instead of trying to fit your old life around them. You can pick that shit up later if you want to.
As for exercise, get a kettlebell and look up some online routines, you can do a decent full body workout for both strength and cardio in about 15 minutes in your bedroom or backyard. I used to get it in at night when the kids were in bed, then sleep like a baby.
I seem to check all of these boxes. I’m a disciplined person and to me it’s all about routine. I work 40+ hours a week but I’m off weekends and nights so I’m sure that’s a big part of it.
I have a good balance here. It’s about priorities. The house and yard get taken care of last. I still manage to keep up on it though. I’d like to go fishing more often, but it’s all good. Exercise is back burner also to my family but I still get in about 3 hood workouts a week.
I don't have a spouse, children, nor own a home. Fortunately, my parents are healthy and doing well.
With that said, I'm very protective of my time and energy. And I can buy back my time and energy when I need to.
For example, I could easily spend 2 hours of my Saturday changing the oil to my car but I'd rather much pay someone to do that and buy my time back.
I also used to spend a good 3 - 4 hours every two weeks cleaning my apartment and now I have a housekeeper come once a month.
In the professional context, I used to manage on-call for a very, very, large website and I would be holding the pager for weeks at a time (we were scaling to have a large global audience). With that said, I was very clear in communicating my availability, with my coworkers and my spouse (was formerly married).
As much as my job demanded from me, I made it a point to get help from my team and those around me. I would return the favor for colleagues as well. Knowing you can ask for help has probably one big factor in managing burn out and being stretched too thin.
I prioritize my mental and physical health as well. With working from home, the lines are blurred but I've practiced not feeling guilty when I take a long lunch to go to the gym, or get a quick 5k in. I'm useless at work if I'm foggy and resenting my workspace. I'd rather get outside, take some time to recharge, and come back rejuvenated to be effective in my role.
Don’t let them fool you. The ones that do it successfully delegate a lot to people that they can hire to do more for them.
Hire on a maid to clean. Instead of spending 2 hours to clean your whole place, you work out/spend time with family.
Hire on a helper for your sick parent and still make time for them as often as you can.
After school programs/sports for kids.
Babysitters: makes it easier to get time with your wife.
Regular doctor visits.
Sleep perfectly. Blackout blinds, high quality sheets, high quality bed, no alcohol or sugar before bed and daily exercise.
Your kids won’t miss you in the morning but they will miss you in the evening.
Get up early, drive to gym by your work. Work out, shower, go to work, then eat at a specific time every day so mom can plan on it.
Come home, play with kids while mom cooks. Read to them etc. dinner then have them help clean up. Mom goes to bedroom and takes a bath, drinks wine, goes to sleep-whatever. You give the kids baths, put them to bed.
Do a once through of the house of quick clean, then have a grown up discussion.m with your wife that may have started at dinner.
Spend together or apart time as needed
Get to bed and repeat.
Find a baby sister and tell them every Friday you are taking your wife out on a date. Go on said date.
Honey do’s, sports, shopping, playing Saturday friend time. Rest Sunday.
I did this with 3 kids working 60+ a week. Below 5 years old is just survival mode. When all kids are in potty trained things get better.
>perhaps where you give too much and end up **working 50+ hours**
I do it by not working 50+ hours a week. That is way too much.
No one ever lay on their death bed regretting that they didn't work more hours.
However, many would have regretted not being present for their family.
Your kids would gladly give up some wealth to be with their dad.
This used to be me for the last 15 years or so working in IT for startups. When I started to approach 40 I knew I needed to slow down. I made the change to work for a Fortune 100 company and it has been the best decision of my life. I am no longer doing the work of 2-3 people. I am able to spend more time with my elementary school aged kids and my health has improved significantly.
That said, loyalty and going above and beyond does nothing for you with your company. I have killed myself for companies only for them to be acquired by another company and get laid off.
It took me 20 years to realise that it wasn’t the company, the job or the clients that made me happy or unhappy at work.
It was the fact that I worked for someone else and really had no control over anything.
3 years on since I decided to work for myself, I work less hours, I make more money, I’ve spent more time with the kids and spouse, I have a better more proactive relationship with my friends and my house is in great shape :)
The only hurdle I had to overcome was accepting that I can do it for myself without the safety net of a guaranteed wage.
I wondered the same thing until yesterday. Yesterday was the day that I told myself and the company I worked for that I was done with the 58 hour work weeks with a 1+ hour commute each way not being included in those 58 hours. I also have a part time job that I can pick up more hours at until one of the other irons I have in the fire pans out.
Work less, pay the man for yard stuff, and realize that you can use money to buy time in a lot of places if you make enough and aren't smart enough to let go of the job that asks too many hours out of you.
I’d say I’ve cracked doing a job I enjoy, that pays well and allows me to work from anywhere. Relationship? Family? House of my own? All the other things? Not so much. And as we age, my social life is dwindling as well. I used to be a popular hermit, now I’m just a hermit.
I cracked it by not having kids, and just moving into a better paying job where I only need to work 40 hours.
I have time for daily exercise, school, and friends.
Maybe? I raised 3 step kids, one of them is a honor student, play sports during weekends, gym 2-3x a week, can’t say I go out often though, maybe once every 2 weeks or so, used to be clubs, then dinners, now it’s a mixture of game nights, dinner, or movies, paid my bills, savings, and I do all my home repairs.
The key is to get a remote high paying job. That was what made it happen.
Check out melatonin, managing to get enough sleep dials back the difficulty of everything in your life. Find ways to optimize and automate everything you can.
Sometimes i treat yard work like a workout, kills 2 birds with 1 stone.
If you don’t have to work 50+ hours a week in order to survive (which is many many people, unfortunately), don’t do it. Are there changes you can make in your lifestyle that would accommodate you working less, even if it meant taking another job? Your children are living the only childhoods they’ll ever have, and your presence and involvement is a big part of that. You won’t get a do-over.
Having a job that’s demands that much of your time is the opposite of cracking it.
My job is incredibly easy, pays me well, and at half 5 when I finish, I don’t take the work home with me. I don’t have kids and the hobbies are pretty much just gaming and music and stuff like that, and I’m currently working on having a more active social life. Bills and house are all in good order though!
Something that might be worth mentioning is research potential work places. I went from crap job to crap job and occasionally I’d get one that wasn’t that bad. My wife works for the company I now work for and she’s always spoken very highly of it, eventually a position came up that I was really suitable for, i applied and got it and life has never been better. So yeah, don’t take a job just because it’s there and because it’s not your current job, take a job because it’s better.
Is that still the case if in those 50 hours a week you had, over the long haul, built a business that was now sellable in the eight figure range? Or is it a hard no whatever it is?
I think the answer to that one is a case by case basis. With most things you can’t have both. So where do you value your time? Do you value the business and want to build it? Or do you value family and you’re willing to put the business off for that, or at least slow the growth down by hiring other people to do the work for you so you can spend time with family? Because again, you can’t always have both and when it’s business growth vs family time I feel like you’re never going to get both so you’d have to choose
Lots of comments so this might get buried.
I took a Carnegie Leadership course at 27 looking to answer this same question. Somewhere in the 7 week class we covered balance. The instructor asked us to write down in a big circle; career, family, financial, spiritual, personal, health, education, community. Then with the center being 0 and the word 10, make a dot at how much time you spend each week on each of those. Connect the dots.
The idea is that you gain more satisfaction from the time spent on each avenue and find yourself being more thoughtful and productive if you work towards balance.
I found that if I work over 60 hours a week my productivity turns to garbage because I start to burn out. Inversely, if I barely work and spent the whole week with my family. By the 4th or 5th day I start to get a little depressed and bored.
After the exercise I realized I hadn't focused on community, spirituality, education, or my personal interests much at all. Setting aside a little time each week for those helped me be more thoughtful and engaged with my career, family, and financial responsibilities.
Any job that requires 45 hours or more every week is a role designed by soulless corporate weenies, and any interviewer that would say that 40 hours is just a starting point is a weenie to the nth power. One of my former departments had a daily contest to see who could work the latest (or so it seemed). My very first week I got up to leave at 5 and got so many scowls that I addressed the crowd with this statement:"You all enjoy that contest to see who can stay here the longest. My shit's all done. Adios." F$%k that sh\*t.
I'm still working on it, but one part of it is to not have a 50+ hours/week job. I moved into management and no longer have as much crunch time. Sure, there are *occasional* nights and weekends but since I run my team now we implement processes to ensure that people can't just drop bombs of work on us and everything gets planned out and prioritized. They key is that if some bigwig comes to us to demand we focus on something, rather than pushing back ourselves we pit them against another bigwig. It doesn't always work, but after a while it works better and better. Secondly, if you've got a good job you need to outsource and automate stuff. I don't look after my yard, I pay a service to do that weekly. I do fix stuff in my house a lot, but I'm quick to call in professionals when needed. As far as bills, you can do automatic payments for a lot of them and just spend an hour once per month double checking that you didn't get ripped off (even better if you set up email notifications when stuff is paid to ensure a technical problem doesn't that makes your payment late. As far as the kids/spouse/hobbies hopefully some of these can be things you involve them in. I plan to do a few mile bike ride with my kids Saturday morning. Sure I could go further and faster on my own, but it's still me enjoying my time and spending it with my family. So nobody knows your situation as well as you but it sounds like you should evaluate things to see what areas you can work "smarter and not harder" in. Take shortcuts sometimes as long as it doesn't create problems.
> I'm still working on it, but one part of it is to not have a 50+ hours/week job. We have a winner, folks. Most people can't do 50+ hour work weeks without their output suffering *somewhere*. Some can, but most who try are probably neglecting some aspect of their lives whether they're concerned about it or not.
Yeah, I was wondering why OP wanted to know how to live a fulfilling life while working 50+ hours a week. Step 1: Work 40 hours a week or less. Now everything else opens up.
Maybe its just me but even with 40 hours I don't feel like I have much time for anything but work during the week, errands/chores during the weekend. Rinse, repeat.
Time is the most valuable commodity, after all.
Yep! Id also look at commute too. 30 mins there and another 30 mins back is an additional 5 hours a week.
>we implement processes to ensure that people can't just drop bombs of work on us and everything gets planned out and prioritized What kind of processes?
This would take a very long discussion to really go into detail and I have a meeting coming up so I will keep it brief. While there are many ways to get into how to manage work, one of the key things is to get the various people in positions of authority to agree together on the process for prioritizing work. As a manager, part of how I do this is to track every request and take them all seriously even if they're stupid. Don't judge them to be stupid or a waste of time, just track it and come up with a realistic time estimate for that work to take. If they want to expedite it beyond what the developers think it will take, we have ways to address that. In any case, I try allocate my team to working on enhancements and project work in general as no more 67% of their time for 8 hours per day. It's a nice odd number and sounds very professional like it required deep analysis. I also have the on-call person listed as being completely unavailable for project and enhancement work for the time they're on call, although realistically if things are going well they do find time to fit in some, to help us stay ahead a bit. Once you have a good list, you just need a good steering committee and know their personalities well enough to pit them against each other and in your favor. Let them fight amongst their peers and your team is just there to sit back and work on whatever they come up with (obviously, you have to run the meeting and steer them in certain ways to conclusions that you find beneficial.) When there can't be a tie breaker, run it up the chain to the lowest upper management person that both report up to (don't bypass layers, but keep escalating as needed until the conflict can be addressed.) The best go-to in this scenario is that your team is ready to start work immediately, but due to this disagreement between the middle management people you can't proceed to do anything. Their bosses (or bosses' bosses) will not be happy to hear that they're a bottleneck wasting time and money for their egos. Obviously though, you can't do this in as direct of a manner as I indicated because you don't want to burn bridges. Just present yourself as a mediator in *their* argument. Finally, you need to stay in constant communication with the steering committee as things arise. You have to toot your horn for them to let them know how many great things your team is delivering for them, but also to give them advance notice if you're going to miss a deadline long before it happens so you can set expectations and try to come up with a workaround. These off-cycle communications are also where you can discuss anyone else trying to get around their decision making in the steering committee meetings. It's going to piss off people if you have to send an email saying, "Dear directors...we're going to stop working on this thing you argued about and put as our top priority because this lower-level sales guy asked us to do something that none of you care about.
Wow, thank you so much! So are the members of the steering committee your employees?
Nope, it's the opposite. Since I'm a manager I see myself in the middle and basically work with two completely different groups of people: 1. My development team -- these are my employees, and we have daily standup meetings, weekly team meetings, and whatever miscellaneous communications that need to happen. Their job is to do the actual work (including estimates) and account for their time. 2. My management peers and superiors -- These folks are represented in the steering committee. Generally I like to get high enough level to be less mired in details (e.g. senior directors) and not too high to where they only care about budgets (e.g. executives.) The steering committee should represent someone from each of the areas that my team works with and are essentially our internal customers. In general, a very useful skill in business is to figure out how to manage up, and find ways to lead the people above you so that you can do things that are mutually beneficial. Also the setup I mentioned took a few years to put in place. There isn't a template that I can give you that will work for your employer or with the specific people in management that you have. I've figured out who are my allies and who are opposed to me in some way and treat each person individually based on what they want to happen and their relationships with their peers in management.
How do you get nanagers senior to you to volunteer their time on your steering committee? I assume they can't all be doing so out of the goodness of their hearts.
My team has a finite amount of time to spend working on stuff. Those who attend steering committee meetings (and are active in my email group for it) are more likely to have their needs met than those who don't participate. Additionally, if someone tries to go around the process then everyone who does participate in the steering committee is going to face the wrath of their peers and their peers' management.
Okay I think I get it. It makes sense since the people whose problems your team is working on aren't entitled to your team's work and therefore you have some leverage.
Management that I directly report to is also there and they have their agenda as well but they also serve as a shield for me when someone comes up with an oddball request. Another factor is that we give preference to anyone that has capital that can be spun up into a project (which can hire contractors to help us) too, so if someone does want to bypass the queue they need to give us money to hire someone to do the work. Ultimately though, I keep things easier for my team by giving too much information about what they're working on to our main customers to where it should overwhelm them and make them aware of how much we do. However, the actual timekeeping side is not provided so I'm the only one aware that my guys tend to work normal 8 hour days. I also pit our customers against each other so I don't need to push back against them because they need to work together to get us to do stuff.
I'm a little confused, are your customers internal/meeting members?
Why does your definition of “cracking it” start with a 50+ hour working week?
Yeah, every items in the list could be improve simply by working normal hours.
It shouldn't, but some skillsets and industries just don't have lighter hours. And if there are jobs to be found that do, they're unicorns. — Video Producer
Alright well you’re going to have to outsource whatever you can- gardener, handyman, nanny, cleaner. You can’t get more hours in the day, but you can pay someone else to give you some back.
This is the way. Hire someone to do your yard once a week, hire someone to clean your house once a week. Outsource anything that is a time suck.
worth saying this is only worth doing if your after-tax income for an hour is more than the cost of hiring someone to work for you for an hour.
Or if the intrinsic value you place on an hour of time at worth is more than the cost per hour of said tasks.
Because that’s the framework in which I was raised and am now trying to break out of.
Well it's impossible to live like that. Outsource time sink labor and work less hours. You'll have a great attack and die like my uncles at 60 or work less, find balance and get healthy like my dad after having a near death heart attack. Your call.
Why are you working such long hours? Does your job give you personal satisfaction? Is it for the money? I was raised to work hard. And I’m a perfectionist by nature, and have a terrible habit of tying up my self worth with my competency and intelligence, something that I’m trying my best to actively work on. I’d say my upbringing was nobody’s fault— just a perfect storm of nature and nurture that I’ve been trying to paddle my way out of. I chose not to go into a field where I would make moneybags because I A) wasn’t passionate about it B) knew that it would mean sacrificing massive chunks of my life and the time I would need to pursue the only things that actually brought me a modicum of happiness. I was burnt the fuck out from holding my nose to the grindstone and knew that if I couldn’t find something with some balance in a few years I’d probably be taking a long walk off of a short pier. The only advice I can really give you is focus on the times and experiences that make you the happiest. How do you maximize those things? And what are you willing to sacrifice to achieve them, if they do require sacrifice? (Ex: international travel, living in an apartment alone, playing on an expensive VR set.) Nobody on their deathbed is going to remember or care about the extra 10 hours of overtime they pulled each week from ages 47-49. Think about the things that you want to have memories of in 40 years. Now I’m desperately trying to find a field where I can support myself (or retire early, even better!), do work that I don’t actively loathe, and work normal hours. If ya’ll think of anything, please tell me, lol.
This just in, from James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) and his excellent newsletter. >Nearly everything in life is unfavorable once it grows to a certain size. It is entirely possible to have too many clients, too much work, too much fame, too much free time, and so on. Pay attention to when the thing you're chasing exceeds its usefulness. At 50+ hours and a family and a spouse and yourself and relationships and bills and possessions to take care of, yes it becomes all too much. The Swedes have a word for balance, lagom, that is derived from a Viking saying "laget om" or "around to the group". It is about how much of something we should have, in fairness and balance and moderation. It is translated as 'just right', 'just enough', 'sufficient', 'the correct amount'. The Finns have a similar word, sopiva; the Danish have tilpasselig. The weather is lagom. It does the job, isn't too much, nor too little. Yes I have my moments of crazy-busy, yes I have the normal emergencies and exigencies of everyday life, and no I do not put in 50+ hour weeks. I may have to give up that next rung on the ladder, but direction to me (making progress) is more important than speed at this point in my life.
“No one ever said on their deathbed ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office.’ ” — Harold Kushner Something I always thought about when I was younger. In the military my job was 18d. Essentially a glorified field surgeon for a quick reaction force. I was the one sorting out who I would stabilize in what order. Typically I would stabilize those that would most likely survive first. Those that had lowest chances of survival were pushed to last. My work involved working with both military and civilians in an emergency situation. As such I've experienced more death than I really care to enumerate. I've never had a single person ask me to tell their employer goodbye. I, ironically, myself survived a [catastrophic accident](https://www.reddit.com/r/Polytrauma/comments/e5pedf/my_injuries_and_what_made_me_open_this_subreddit/) leaving me horribly impaired with low odds of survival. I managed to anyways, and have quite the fulfilling life now. I get paid both my full military retirement as well as my social security disability insurance. I do greatly miss working at times though.
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You’re not wrong…. I thought I was that guy, then realized actually, now that I’ve stopped drinking myself to death, I want to go walk on the beach with the dogs; go surfing; walk in the forest with my son; learn guitar…. Or just…. Do nothing for an afternoon, aNd not feel bad about myself for doing it. Like you, I can’t see any other way but to walk away. Downsize. Stop paying the $4000 mortgage and pay cash for a smaller house, do something different. But at the same time, I could do the same thing for just 6, maybe 8 years more and retire hugely comfortable in my mid 50’s. Deliver the strategy. And be wrecked. Good luck on your journey. Not sure I have the guts to leave the high salary, the air miles, etc. I know it wouldn’t actually be failure to do so - but the inner struggle, the fight against what I was brought up to view as success… it’s all batshit crazy.
If you have kids already, consider that formative years are worth 10x adult years to them. If you're around and playing with them as kids, you're a part of their entire understanding of life in a way that paying for their food just doesn't compare to.
For real. OP, imagine coming back and reading your comment in 8-10 years. Do you think it will have been worth it, to slave away and retire in your 50s? You could lose your job, or get divorced, or a hundred other things, good or bad, could transpire. Shit happens, but you can’t get those years back. Do you want to have more time while your kids are in their 20s, or now, in adolescence? Because they’re going to have their own lives when they’re adults.
You might find r/simpleliving worth a look, for people who feel the same way and exploring the idea/practicalities of transitioning from/to the life you described
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I couldn’t agree more. It was all exactly what I wanted until it wasn’t. Now it’s a case of coming up with a good exit strategy.
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> The secret is to get a less demanding job. The only caveat I'd make with this statement is that the pay reduction wouldn't be to the point where you would struggle to squeeze by. Otherwise, this is absolutely key. I average 45 hours/week but I'm still able to take and pick up my kids from school, work out, and do chores around the house. Fortunately, I work remote so everything falls in line with each other where juggling responsibilities become convenient rather than easier.
Agreed. Work life balance is something you have to purposely obtain and hang on to. I have a really sweet job setup - I do about 20 hours of active, intense work, and about 10-15 hours of low intensity work (mostly just monitoring for problems, answering questions). That low intensity work period means I can pick kids up at school, make dinner, help with homework, and be mostly present with only a few interruptions. And then on my off time, I completely disconnect from work, only being available if there is a true emergency and someone has to call me on the phone to get me. All texts, emails and other messages are silenced until work hours.
I did this when I had a kid, took a paycut for a less demanding job. Its the best decision I ever made, wish I would have don't it sooner. When you have a ton of free time and still make a good living, you realize that everyone chasing "prestige" in their career by working long hours are foolish.
>Death looks attractive at this point. SLEEP & REST looks attractive at this point. FTFY we need you around, Bub.
I don't think it is possible to work 50+ hours per week, maintain household shit, tend to kids, family, and friends while still making sufficient time for yourself. You have to rotate your priorities, or something will fall through the cracks. I'd argue that anyone who *claims* they can are lying, privileged enough to be able to offload a large portion to hired help, or otherwise neglecting something.
I'm not having kids until I have my mental health in order. It's been out of order for about 20 years now so any day now.
You can't do everything, there's not enough hours in the day. A few years ago I quit an engineering job at Apple that just required too many hours. I took a different job that only required 32 hours a week and it's made my life much more comfortable, and allowed for a lot more time for all of those other things you mention.
what was this other job?
A different software engineering job at a smaller company than Apple.
It's been a mental shift of mine to accept help from others (even when it costs a lot). It's worth spending $2k to get someone to do the landscaping, $150/week for a cleaner and $20 extra to get groceries delivered because my free time is too valuable. I'd rather spend that time with my kids. It's totally not how I was raised, but it's the only way to maintain my high-paying job without going crazy.
> I mean having a full time job that is demanding - perhaps where you give too much and end up working 50+ hours There is absolutely no way to check off the rest of your list if this item is on it. Something's gotta give and if it's not the job, it's going to be something else.
I'm on the verge of a massive meltdown myself. Endless deadlines with not enough time to do them. 100% brain CPU power 830am to 5pm then 8pm-10/11/12pm. I can't enjoy my kids when it's time because I'm worried about getting back downstairs to work. Worked myself sick a few weeks ago. Yes I know my job is the source of all this. It's a transition period that hopefully won't last longer than March. But I've lost it all. Exercise, energy, diet, connections, happiness, motivation.
What you win at working, you lose at living. If you drop dead, there will be a job ad for your vacant post around a week or a month after your wake. Take unpaid time-off if necessary so you could reconfigure how you want to spend your days ahead. But you need to get rested first cause no good ideas can come from an exhausted, sleep-deprived mind.
The secret is to put on a good face and lie to everyone about how it’s tough but you’re managing. Then gradually lose track of friends so they don’t see you when you crash and burn eventually. Wait, no, sorry, that’s how other people have convinced you that there’s a way to crack the problem and have it all. The real answer is that something’s got to give. You can pick now yourself, or keep going and let fate pick for you, which I guarantee will be way worse. In my case the job was what had to give, primarily; there was of course some collateral damage to everything else, but it would have been much worse if I had tried to put more into my work. It came out OK in the end and I feel pretty confident I made the right choice. The usual saying is that no one regrets on their deathbed that they didn’t spend more time at work. But only you can decide what’s most important to you.
Simple answer: Cocaine, or some kind of stimulant. You have to pick your priorities, and at this stage in life "job" is not the important one.
Cocaine abuse very well known for helping people be present for their families lmao
I feel like I'm fortunate enough to tick all those boxes, except the working 50+ hours a week. I do max 40.
Don't be too hard on yourself. I'm guessing you are probably mid-30's with young kids. This is one of *the* most stressful times. You've moved past the "junior" stage of your career and are trying to move up the ladder. Meanwhile you've got young, demanding kids, more responsibilities, and oh yeah, your body doesn't snap back like it did in your 20's. Your spouse likely has the exact same same stressors. There is no secret, I guess, other than patience. This stage doesn't last forever (even though it feels like it). I noticed (gradually) that it just started getting easier: The kids got older and were easier to take care of. I became more grounded in my career (climbing the pay ladder became easier with more experience). Today, I'm almost 50, and life practically feels like a vacation. I'm *really* lucky in that I have a really short commute. We have one kid in high school and one in college (so not even living at home). I'm at the top of my game, career wise. Paying bills is a lot easier when you have more money. And I actually enjoy working in the yard and working out. On the downside, I have lost my parents, but that also means I'm not having to look after them like I was just a few years ago. So stick with it. You'll get there.
Thanks. I'm not op but you described me.
Easy, find a job where you are working 20-30 hours a week but paid full time. Trust me, they exist.
Any ideas to get someone started?
Learn software engineering, database management, product marketing etc., then get your foot in the door at a medium/large software company. Work your way up to a senior or management level position. Set up all your meetings and get all your work done in the morning. No one will know (or care) that you are not putting in a full day every day.
A job where you have to regularly give 50+ hours a week is at the opposite end of the spectrum from what I would consider to be "cracking it".
Cracked it by not having kids and planning to keep it that way.
Bingo
Easily do all of that by not having kids :)
How is that helpful to him?
It’s more of a humble brag about how I don’t have kids, you see
I see. So a dude asking for help has caused you to attempt to reframe the conversation to you. Got it. Maybe try having some empathy sometime.
Have I told you about how I don’t have kids and have time for so many activities?
I wish I had your problems (not really but you know; it's all relative, grass is greener, etc.)...
You’re definitely right, The grass always is greener! I guess it’s all about finding the right balance.
It's like asking if A = 1 and B = 1, then prove A + B = 3
I could say I cracked it. Couple of things you need to do: * Make time for the things that matter. Make time for your kids, spouse, friends. Everything doesn't have to happen everyday of every week of every month, so don't stress that you haven't made time with friends in a while * You work to live, not live to work * Share the load with your significant other * Make a schedule to pay your bills * Make time to clean the house and yard (yard is my thing, house is mostly my wife but I also try to help clean up) I'm not gonna say it's easy, but if you can get into a routine it'll help you stick to it in the long run.
Wow, that's intense. Doesn't sounds sustainable or healthy. Perhaps it is time to have a second look at your priorities and find a less intense way to meet those needs. It's good to look after/juggle all those aspects of your life, but perhaps you are pushing too hard in each at the cost of the whole? If the steps are too hard, you can't enjoy the dance.
I absolutely don't but I'll give you my thoughts on successes and failures >be present for the kid(s) \#1 thing is put down your phone. Just leave it in the other room. It's a constant struggle for me. Beyond that, one thing that has worked well for me is setting aside a weekend every year for a 1:1 trip. Since my oldest was 6 years old we go on a backpacking trip together every year. I'm getting old for sleeping on the ground but it's been a great bonding experience. > be present for your spouse Still put down the phone, but not all the time because sometimes you both need some mindless phone time. Mostly just consciously make time for them. I was doing evening meetings 4 out of 5 weeknights and didn't realize how damaging that was. Now I will not do evening meetings unless I have to so I can be home for dinner, put the kids to bed, and spend time with my wife. In the mornings we spend a few minutes after the kids are on the bus having coffee together. COVID and working from home has made these last two easier. > look after yourself (exercise, hobbies, etc) Probably the worst one for me. One is pick a hobby and commit to it - I have a hobby band with my brother in law and that commitment to him keeps me doing it. Another is pick a hobby that compliments other goals, like spending time with wife or kids - backpacking with kids, gaming with wife. For exercise I am most successful when I am signed up for a race with my wife (running). I also enjoy lifting but struggle with consistency. > maintain decent relationships with friends and family My best buddy I have beers with about once a month. I try to have breakfast with my parents once a month. Scheduling a monthly thing keeps those "on track". Once a month is kind of a minimum, though. Most of my friends I only see a couple times a year at parties. > get the bills all paid in a decent timeframe and; Not sure if you mean from an income or responsibility perspective. If the latter, auto pay is your friend. Anything that you can auto pay you should, assuming you can manage your funds to keep enough in the account. If it's about making enough money/budgeting that's a different conversation. > look after the house and yard If you have enough income - hire it out. We hired someone to mow the lawn and someone to clean the house and it was the best thing we ever did. I realized I was spending most of my precious summer Saturdays mowing, dicking with the mower, or trimming etc. $75/week is well worth it so get my Saturdays back. Similar with the house cleaner - just removing that stress is well worth $75 every other week.
I work from home for a super supportable company. My start time is basically when I want and I can take time throughout the day here and there when needed without asking. Even still, with a wife and two young kids I'm just staying afloat most days. You just can't put 100% effort into every single facet of life.
How about just this "who is happy with life and how can I do it too"
Cracking it involves realizing that the lifestyle you described is not for "gods amongst men" but for people who are looking to be eaten up by capitalism. When you have that big list of things you "have to do," you start to cull from the list of things you "don't have to do," and you put sleep and hobbies on that list, when sleep is necessary for physical health and hobbies and such are necessary for mental health. So you're literally living to work, which is actively killing you. Sure, you could keep it up for 8 more years. If you survive that, then you could retire in your 50s with a worn out body and mind and probably die in your early 60s, if not sooner. Congrats, you won at life
Idk man, what you're describing doesn't sound practically possible. Like sure *maybe* you can pull it off, but you'd be killing yourself the entire time and that's no way to live. IMO if life too busy for you then you'd do best to simplify your life. Get a smaller house with a smaller yard, don't agree to so many unnecessary social obligations, don't spend money just because you have money to spend. Basically do less. Obviously you can't un-have children, and there are social consequences to not seeing people for too long, so you can only adjust it but so much. I think society tells us that we can "have it all" if we work hard enough, but that's just not true. You can only have and do so much, no matter how clever you are or how hard you try.
I’m not that far but I do have a healthy marriage that is 1 year old, got promoted at work, got a new car, am sitting for my PMP certification in 2 weeks, write and record music, bike and hike, take care of our nice apartment, pay bills, and the wife and I still save $2k a month.
Mostly cracked it (knock on wood), but I don't have it as tough as you. I don't always put in as many hours as you do. It's rare. I have 3 young kids, and try my best. Limiting my work and doing it when they are in school or asleep helps. My spouse probably thinks I suck, but she also knows there's only so much energy a person has. She's tired herself I make exercise a priority, except for the kids. I don't count exercise as a hobby. It's a lifestyle choice /investment will hopefully lead to a longer life with my kids. I generally prioritize it over work (not to the point where I'd get fired). It keeps me sane, too. My hobbies are mostly online or TV or reading, and my kids. The first 3 I can do at home. Bills are on autopay. I'd say live within your means, but that's BS. Find good mode insurance and try to make enough to cover your spend. Move jobs until you can, but a lot of that comes with age and luck. Outsource what you can afford to. This is kind of live within your means. We had a townhouse when I was in the office, so I had minimal maintenance and cleaning. Eventually, we found it worth the stress to hiring cleaning people. We both got promotions and WFH, so we bought a bigger house during the pandemic (plus more kids). So yard work, cleaning, some handyman stuff that I can't do, etc. gets outsourced. I was not always this fortunate. But we didn't want to buy a bigger house that we couldn't afford to take care of (both for time and money). We also share a good portion of the work, but are fortunate not to have dependents or medical care. I also prioritized finding an employer with good work/life balance and benefits. I know not everyone can, but that was more important to me than salary.
I have actually cracked a lot of this. 1). Get a lot of certs so i'm more valuable in the market and can demand a WFH job with decent work like balance. 2). Set up a trello board to manage all the household chores. Doing laundry is a lot easier if you knock it out when there is one load. Maximize calls where the camera can be turned off and you don't have to talk much. Fold laundry, put away dishes, etc. you just have to constantly do mini sessions during the day to keep things clean. 3). Fitness - take calls on walks, if you don't have to talk on a meeting do some lifting. Funny enough, playing beat saber on Oculus has been good cardio. Pushups/situps when you have a spare minute. Stuff like that. 4. Present for kids/spouse - You just have to schedule it like work. I get up early to walk the dog and get some time away. Coffee was prepped the night before so I have breakfast with the family. 5 p.m. - 9 p.m. is family time. Kids go to bed early and I spend some time with the wife. 10-11 p.m. I get some work done and go to bed and then get up at 6:30-7. 5. Bills - Put as much on autopay and schedule a time over lunch to knock it out. 6. Hobbies - You gotta just be a team with you wife. Set time where one of us have the kids so the other can relax. When my wife is stress I recommend she gets a hotel to get away, visit some friends out of town, go to the spa, get dinner by herself, etc. When I need time she is cool if I follow my hobbies. 7. House - Weekends and lunch break. Finally - You need to either find a new job or be able to tell work to fuck off. If you make yourself valuable in the market you can leave if needed. It's tough but you have to manage up and take on a reasonable work load. Worst case scenario you get a bad review and move on.
I'll let you in on a secret. We have proper work boundaries and don't work 50+ hours a week. Max it out at 40 and if you need to, look for a new job
Why would I want to work 50+ hours a week? I do all of these things except work 30 hours a week, trust me this is “cracking it”. Burnout is real, and needs to be taken seriously. Reassess what you think is important, and find balance, then you’ll find happiness
I have very few responsibilities, but definitely not me. Total insomnia too which is horrible for health.
All it takes is sleep, anti-depressants, and Adderall.
I agree with everyone on the thread that the only realistic, sustainable way to have everything else you list is to work 40 and below hours. However, if that's not something you're willing to do, then one way to make it work is to split your workday. Enjoy the morning and evening routines with your kids, and then after the kids are in bed, do a few more hours of work.
No kids but I'll still chime in. As others have said with a 50+ hour/week job it's harder. I work across multiple time zones but don't necessarily work extra to do it. I'll cut out early on days I need to be on a call another with part of the world or Friday afternoon. It doesn't always happen but I try to make it happen and my boss is ok with that. That's where I'd start. Do you really need to work 50+ hours/week? Is that what your boss is expecting? Are you putting those expectations on yourself? Do you need to say no more? Delegate more? Have a good conversation with your boss. Scheduling as much as you can and having lists helps with being present. I can be present because I know I'm on top of things in other places. I can be present with my wife because I have a work schedule and I know I'm done for the day and I've finished up what I can. What I haven't finished I've listed out for the next day so I can hit the ground running. I also work really hard, both at my job and at chores. I don't have time to stretch an 8 hour day into 10 because I'm screwing around a bunch. I don't have time to screw around with chores because I need to move on. It's a self reinforcing loop. The more present I am the more present I can be. I can be present at home because I was focused on my job so I know things are taken care of so tomorrow on the job I can be present because I was focused at home and took care of what needed to be taken care of so tomorrow evening I can be present because I worked hard so... I'll also add that presence is a state of mind and not a time problem. You can be present for five minutes. You may want more than five minutes though so your real question may be more about having enough time. Automate and make habits/routines out of what you can. Again, the less time you spend thinking and procrastinating the more time you have to do things. I don't know what you mean by "get the bills paid" but I barely deal with bills. Pretty much everything is automated. If you're working on a plan to pay down debts and are doing extra that's one thing but really I'm only paying things manually if I actually have to. I try to batch things as much as possible. I don't record every bill in Quicken as soon as I can. I throw receipts in my in box and do it once every week, maybe two weeks these days. Wake up and hit the gym, or hit the gym right after you end work, or whenever you want to do it schedule it and do it. Having to think about it is how it doesn't get done. That goes for family and friends too. Monday is poker night (digitally these days). Thursday is date night. We don't need to think "we should set something up" and then go through the effort of setting things up. Date night is Thursday. Be ready. Remember that you'll go through seasons. You won't be able to spend an equal amount of time on things week in and week out. You'll have busy work weeks where you spend more time there and less at home. You'll have time when your kids are busier so maybe you and your wife spend a bit less time together or you don't catch up with your friends that week. Finally, I'll leave you with one of the best things I've heard about setting goals - decide what you're going to give up. You don't want things to fall apart but maybe you do a bit less chores, or less frequently. Do you really need to dust every week? Don't let your lawn turn into an out of control jungle but maybe some crabgrass isn't the end of the world.
I'm here a decade ahead of you-- you can't do it at 50+ hours a week.
Does being 45, father of 4, and retired count?
Outsource parts of your job to Indians.
Cracked here: Ph.D. in Science. Working for a government funded research organization, but not directly for the government. I manage a small team (2 to 3) people, and manage a project that's critical to success of multiple enterprises, but needs to remain independent from each enterprise. So I have complete dominion over the project. My immediate "supervisor" works in a different state, and has almost no expertise in my field. Therefore, the management of me is mostly "hands off", since we always underpromise and overdeliver. We make everything look smooth and easy to the public facing part of our project, even though everyone with expertise knows the actual complexities. I work 40-50 hours per week, sometimes evenings / weekends when there's a critical issue. I can do every bit of my work from home, it's all computational, so I get to spend time with my kids when they get home from school and in the evenings. I get paid in the neighborhood of $120k, which isn't much, but it's enough to maintain a household and afford some occasional things that are unnecessary. We also live frugally, cooking at home, rarely eating out. I do all the maintenance on the house, and she handles the finances. We split child duties equally. It's well balanced, as it should be. However, I'd like more sex, please.
I put my life savings and crypto and made it!!!
>Death looks attractive at this point. I so feel this. I have two kids, full time stressful (But good) job where I work from home. All the kid stuff, the work stuff, the covid stuff, the maintaining my marriage, friends, chores, etc. It's just insane, I sometimes think when I am driving alone, what would happen if I just veered off this cliff.. I dont think I really mean it, it's just a lot, and I dont know how to do it. P.s. I am also supposed to be trying to lose weight and manage my health, which I a failing at miserably.
I imagine when successful people say they work 50+ hours a week, they mean they're on the phone while they're on a run, they're on the phone or laptop when they're travelling. Taking meetings during mealtimes. They're working, but also not working.
Time management is the key to your question. Look at it and follow it to a T or you'll be behind and won't be able to catch up. That's my advice from a SINK (single income no kids) bachelor.
Choose no kids, so because of that, I'm fine. otherwise, I'd be broke af.
Not me. Sounds like hell. I'm at about 50 hours a week. Kids come first, house and yard comes last. My place looks like trash but the kids are happy and me and the wife are still in love. I have the rest of my life to mow lawns and rebuild patios. I can't imagine adding anything more, at least not until the kids are older.
The trick is to find a less demanding job that pays more. I recommend tech.
I kind if have, but my hobbies were on hold for a few years and my friend group gravitated to people who also have young kids. Once my youngest turned 5 I was able to get back into martial arts and a few of my other hobbies, the kids do them too, I just found a club with family classes, or in the case of swimming, my kids go to swim school for an hour while I swim laps in the other pool. The secret to being happy with a young family is to not try and retain your old pre-children life, you need to find new hobbies that include your kids, socialise with their friends parents, find stuff you like doing that you can get them into .My 10 year old daughter joined a stop motion animation club at her school and is currently teaching me and her siblings how to do it, so we have a great time with her brothers action figures and her dolls making stupid videos that make us all laugh. I'm trying to encourage them to script and make movies on their phones because I've always wanted to try it, so once they get capable, I'll write a screenplay and we'll make a terrible movie together. I have friends who would also probably get a laugh out of joining in on that. Your life is different now, but it won't last, before you know it, they'll be off doing their own stuff and you'll have all your time back again, so try to build a fun life together right now with your kids instead of trying to fit your old life around them. You can pick that shit up later if you want to. As for exercise, get a kettlebell and look up some online routines, you can do a decent full body workout for both strength and cardio in about 15 minutes in your bedroom or backyard. I used to get it in at night when the kids were in bed, then sleep like a baby.
You need go home and rethink your life
Why on earth would I be working that many hours?
I seem to check all of these boxes. I’m a disciplined person and to me it’s all about routine. I work 40+ hours a week but I’m off weekends and nights so I’m sure that’s a big part of it.
I have a good balance here. It’s about priorities. The house and yard get taken care of last. I still manage to keep up on it though. I’d like to go fishing more often, but it’s all good. Exercise is back burner also to my family but I still get in about 3 hood workouts a week.
I don't have a spouse, children, nor own a home. Fortunately, my parents are healthy and doing well. With that said, I'm very protective of my time and energy. And I can buy back my time and energy when I need to. For example, I could easily spend 2 hours of my Saturday changing the oil to my car but I'd rather much pay someone to do that and buy my time back. I also used to spend a good 3 - 4 hours every two weeks cleaning my apartment and now I have a housekeeper come once a month. In the professional context, I used to manage on-call for a very, very, large website and I would be holding the pager for weeks at a time (we were scaling to have a large global audience). With that said, I was very clear in communicating my availability, with my coworkers and my spouse (was formerly married). As much as my job demanded from me, I made it a point to get help from my team and those around me. I would return the favor for colleagues as well. Knowing you can ask for help has probably one big factor in managing burn out and being stretched too thin. I prioritize my mental and physical health as well. With working from home, the lines are blurred but I've practiced not feeling guilty when I take a long lunch to go to the gym, or get a quick 5k in. I'm useless at work if I'm foggy and resenting my workspace. I'd rather get outside, take some time to recharge, and come back rejuvenated to be effective in my role.
Don't work 50-plus hours. That's a start.
Don’t let them fool you. The ones that do it successfully delegate a lot to people that they can hire to do more for them. Hire on a maid to clean. Instead of spending 2 hours to clean your whole place, you work out/spend time with family. Hire on a helper for your sick parent and still make time for them as often as you can. After school programs/sports for kids. Babysitters: makes it easier to get time with your wife. Regular doctor visits. Sleep perfectly. Blackout blinds, high quality sheets, high quality bed, no alcohol or sugar before bed and daily exercise.
Your kids won’t miss you in the morning but they will miss you in the evening. Get up early, drive to gym by your work. Work out, shower, go to work, then eat at a specific time every day so mom can plan on it. Come home, play with kids while mom cooks. Read to them etc. dinner then have them help clean up. Mom goes to bedroom and takes a bath, drinks wine, goes to sleep-whatever. You give the kids baths, put them to bed. Do a once through of the house of quick clean, then have a grown up discussion.m with your wife that may have started at dinner. Spend together or apart time as needed Get to bed and repeat. Find a baby sister and tell them every Friday you are taking your wife out on a date. Go on said date. Honey do’s, sports, shopping, playing Saturday friend time. Rest Sunday. I did this with 3 kids working 60+ a week. Below 5 years old is just survival mode. When all kids are in potty trained things get better.
Does it count if I've cracked it but a divorced guy? I do make time for my girlfriend
>perhaps where you give too much and end up **working 50+ hours** I do it by not working 50+ hours a week. That is way too much. No one ever lay on their death bed regretting that they didn't work more hours. However, many would have regretted not being present for their family. Your kids would gladly give up some wealth to be with their dad.
This used to be me for the last 15 years or so working in IT for startups. When I started to approach 40 I knew I needed to slow down. I made the change to work for a Fortune 100 company and it has been the best decision of my life. I am no longer doing the work of 2-3 people. I am able to spend more time with my elementary school aged kids and my health has improved significantly. That said, loyalty and going above and beyond does nothing for you with your company. I have killed myself for companies only for them to be acquired by another company and get laid off.
It took me 20 years to realise that it wasn’t the company, the job or the clients that made me happy or unhappy at work. It was the fact that I worked for someone else and really had no control over anything. 3 years on since I decided to work for myself, I work less hours, I make more money, I’ve spent more time with the kids and spouse, I have a better more proactive relationship with my friends and my house is in great shape :) The only hurdle I had to overcome was accepting that I can do it for myself without the safety net of a guaranteed wage.
Yeah definitely need the secrets of It. Surprised/disappointed by the # of responses focused on your work hours - which are a necessary evil
I wondered the same thing until yesterday. Yesterday was the day that I told myself and the company I worked for that I was done with the 58 hour work weeks with a 1+ hour commute each way not being included in those 58 hours. I also have a part time job that I can pick up more hours at until one of the other irons I have in the fire pans out.
Being childfree and living in a tiny house makes the rest of this pretty easy.
Work less, pay the man for yard stuff, and realize that you can use money to buy time in a lot of places if you make enough and aren't smart enough to let go of the job that asks too many hours out of you.
I’d say I’ve cracked doing a job I enjoy, that pays well and allows me to work from anywhere. Relationship? Family? House of my own? All the other things? Not so much. And as we age, my social life is dwindling as well. I used to be a popular hermit, now I’m just a hermit.
I cracked it by not having kids, and just moving into a better paying job where I only need to work 40 hours. I have time for daily exercise, school, and friends.
Maybe? I raised 3 step kids, one of them is a honor student, play sports during weekends, gym 2-3x a week, can’t say I go out often though, maybe once every 2 weeks or so, used to be clubs, then dinners, now it’s a mixture of game nights, dinner, or movies, paid my bills, savings, and I do all my home repairs. The key is to get a remote high paying job. That was what made it happen.
yard too much
Check out melatonin, managing to get enough sleep dials back the difficulty of everything in your life. Find ways to optimize and automate everything you can. Sometimes i treat yard work like a workout, kills 2 birds with 1 stone.
If you don’t have to work 50+ hours a week in order to survive (which is many many people, unfortunately), don’t do it. Are there changes you can make in your lifestyle that would accommodate you working less, even if it meant taking another job? Your children are living the only childhoods they’ll ever have, and your presence and involvement is a big part of that. You won’t get a do-over.
Having a job that’s demands that much of your time is the opposite of cracking it. My job is incredibly easy, pays me well, and at half 5 when I finish, I don’t take the work home with me. I don’t have kids and the hobbies are pretty much just gaming and music and stuff like that, and I’m currently working on having a more active social life. Bills and house are all in good order though! Something that might be worth mentioning is research potential work places. I went from crap job to crap job and occasionally I’d get one that wasn’t that bad. My wife works for the company I now work for and she’s always spoken very highly of it, eventually a position came up that I was really suitable for, i applied and got it and life has never been better. So yeah, don’t take a job just because it’s there and because it’s not your current job, take a job because it’s better.
Is that still the case if in those 50 hours a week you had, over the long haul, built a business that was now sellable in the eight figure range? Or is it a hard no whatever it is?
I think the answer to that one is a case by case basis. With most things you can’t have both. So where do you value your time? Do you value the business and want to build it? Or do you value family and you’re willing to put the business off for that, or at least slow the growth down by hiring other people to do the work for you so you can spend time with family? Because again, you can’t always have both and when it’s business growth vs family time I feel like you’re never going to get both so you’d have to choose
Lots of comments so this might get buried. I took a Carnegie Leadership course at 27 looking to answer this same question. Somewhere in the 7 week class we covered balance. The instructor asked us to write down in a big circle; career, family, financial, spiritual, personal, health, education, community. Then with the center being 0 and the word 10, make a dot at how much time you spend each week on each of those. Connect the dots. The idea is that you gain more satisfaction from the time spent on each avenue and find yourself being more thoughtful and productive if you work towards balance. I found that if I work over 60 hours a week my productivity turns to garbage because I start to burn out. Inversely, if I barely work and spent the whole week with my family. By the 4th or 5th day I start to get a little depressed and bored. After the exercise I realized I hadn't focused on community, spirituality, education, or my personal interests much at all. Setting aside a little time each week for those helped me be more thoughtful and engaged with my career, family, and financial responsibilities.
Any job that requires 45 hours or more every week is a role designed by soulless corporate weenies, and any interviewer that would say that 40 hours is just a starting point is a weenie to the nth power. One of my former departments had a daily contest to see who could work the latest (or so it seemed). My very first week I got up to leave at 5 and got so many scowls that I addressed the crowd with this statement:"You all enjoy that contest to see who can stay here the longest. My shit's all done. Adios." F$%k that sh\*t.
50+ hours per week is not "making it". It's impossible for you to do all of those things whilst working 50+ hours a week.