Busting a Myth About Work/Life Balance

Whether you’re still in Startup phase, or slogging through Grind phase, you’re pushing hard and going uphill. You truly understand the nature of the phrase “a Sisyphean task.”

And because everything feels so darn hard, you’re not sure if you got here by cunning and wit or pure blind luck. If you’re so smart, shouldn’t this be easier by now? Even a little? You wonder constantly if it’s all going to come crashing down.

Imposter Syndrome rears its ugly head. Do I have the slightest clue as to what I’m doing? They’re all going to laugh if I fall flat on my face here, aren’t they?
At this stage, you might even have more worries: the welfare of your staff and their families. If you fail, they go down with your ship.

Worse, you have the media and maybe friends and family tut-tutting at you about work/life balance. And how you’re going to die if you don’t get enough sleep.

Because nothing helps you drift off faster than worrying that you’re not getting enough sleep, right?

Here’s the thing: everyone talks about work/life balance, but hardly anyone describes what that’s supposed to look like.

The impression you get is that it’s about rising gently from your bed, refreshed, powering through your day fueled by nicely timed, healthy meals, then some quality time with the family, perhaps a workout, followed by a nice glass of cabernet sauvignon and a book.

Bahahaha.

Perhaps your day looks like that if you’re a billionaire, but for the rest of us, work/life balance is actually about averages.

Yes, averages. You’re not aiming for daily perfection here. That’s a good way to sign up for failure. What you should try to do is make sure you’re reasonably balanced over the course of a week, or maybe even a month.

Have a crazy work week? Average that out by chilling as much as possible on the weekend. Are your mornings completely bonkers because you have to get everyone out the door on time? Do what you can to make the evenings a bit more relaxed.

At a political fundraiser once, Chandra found herself admiring the resume of the keynote speaker. Mother of four (maybe it was five?) kids, a PhD, powerful position within the party, and so on. How the heck had she managed all of that? Chandra decided to ask her. The answer?

“You can have it all. Just not all at once.”

It was a short answer, but a powerful one that reminds us once again to pace ourselves. We’ll get there. And one of the ways to do that is to…

Take Off Your Hats!

Here’s a confession: we waited far, far too long to hire help in our company.

We started Scribendi in 1997, and while we had copy editors working for us from the start, we didn’t hire anyone to help with support services until 2005. That’s a stupidly long time to be doing everything on the backend ourselves.

Like most new business owners, we were afraid to take what seemed like such a big step. Did we have enough work in that one area to justify a hire? What if we couldn’t make payroll? How do you go about hiring someone anyway? How do you find someone you can trust?

And what if you have to fire them? Yikes!

And yet, the business didn’t really start ticking along until we started “taking off hats,” so to speak. The first thing we hired out was bookkeeping and filing.

Part-time at first, and then full-time as we got busier. We chose this because it was an important function, but it was also our least favorite, most-time consuming activity.

Once we started taking off those hats, we started making more money. Why? Because we were freeing up our time to do what we did best: coming up with new ideas, developing processes for the business and so on.

We applied the same principle at home. We automated our monthly bill payments, hired out things like lawncare as soon as we could afford it, brought in a housekeeping service once a month to tame the dust bunnies, etc.

To think of it another way, as the business owner, what is the highest and best use of your time?

It’s probably not making the monthly stationary order or even running a social media campaign. There are lots of people who are capable of doing these things, and they’ll probably do a better job of it than you! What they can’t do is make decisions on behalf of your business.

The good news is that these days, there are lots of “as needed” services you can use if you’re not ready to take the plunge on employees. You can find everything from ad campaign managers to graphic designers online.

It’s time to start investing in your company’s most important asset: you.

— Adapted from The Entrepreneurial Parent: Run Your Business, Raise Your Family, Keep Your Sanity!