Startup life is something that is very familiar to a lot of people nowadays. Not everyone works in a factory anymore. The working environment is becoming ever so fuzzy, and the lines quickly blur between when work stops and when family time begins.
So how do we not get caught up in a perpetual working void?
This company you’re working on, it’s your baby. Chances are you conceived it and gave birth to it. It’s only natural that you’d want to spend every waking minute together. It’s never far from the front of your mind at any time anyway, right?
Today as I write this It’s 6:22am. I’ve been up since 5:45am by choice (!). I was looking through my big ideas document deciding what I felt like writing about today and this just somehow seemed fitting.
This is what I’m talking about. Getting up an hour early to work on my own projects? Madness!
I would never have thought of sacrificing a little sleep in order to achieve more. I used to be known as the one that would sleep in whenever possible and get up a just the last minute before I stepped out the door.
I’m happy to say that over the past couple of years my life has changed a lot.
His typical day starts at 7am when his wife wakes him up, and ends sometime around midnight. Work just happens in between. While I do admire this, I hope to work less eventually, but knowing myself and how my personality is, I’ll probably end up working playing with things just like he does.
When what you do during the day no longer becomes work in the traditional sense (something you have to do in order to earn money to survive), everything changes perspective.
I’m not at that stage yet, so I will continue the juggling act.
Many a Saturday and Sunday has been wasted here are my compound. Lately however, I work on my business ideas, work on this and other blogs, and generally focus on projects that are going to benefit me somehow in the long term. If I don’t make some progress, I’d feel like it was a waste of a weekend.
My aim is to not only reclaim my weekdays one by one, but also to reclaim my weekends as family time. So for the meantime, I’m focusing on these important projects as a means for a better future and hopefully a better life.
I don’t mind the sacrifice of time and money now in order to get the things I want later. Because I know their cost grows over time. When we have children, I won’t have the same amount of free time – it will take longer and be harder on both my own mindset and also my family.
I think time is the ultimate currency. You know what they say, “You have to spend money to make money”, maybe you also have to spend time to make time too.
Tell us about your juggling act. How do you handle your blog or startup or family time? When and how do you find the time to fit things in?
Brad Pitt said it best: “Be the shark. Keep moving. or Die.”
I have an enormous amount to say about the matter, but the time isn’t right yet.
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Too right! Brad is a smart man. I’d love to see a post from you on the topic – you’re quite the busy man Dr. D – would be good to other’s perspectives on this juggling act we do..