The Unending Search for Work Life Balance

As an accountant, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a whole bunch of people about their business. What I’ve determined is that, for some people, it really is possible to find Work Life Balance. Whether it’s possible for people like you and me is something I’m still working out.

From personal experience, though, I can confirm that with the right amount of thought and planning, Work Life Balance can get better.

But first, some background.

The 9 to 5 Upended…Slowly

To quote Gilbert Chesterton, “tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.”

Tradition can be an amazingly powerful thing. Generations of our progenitor figured out the right way to do things and passed it on to us in a sort of societal evolution. When we are following tradition, we’re following some of the best practices we can.

But…times change. Sometimes our ancestors were just plain wrong, and sometimes they were right for their time. Not for ours.

Which brings us to the traditional 9 to 5. This schedule made sense for factory workers or similar work where a butt in a spot for x amount of time means y amount of widgets.

That’s simply not true with much of what we do today. We’re finally getting pushback–books like Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s Shorter and Tom Rath’s Are You Fully Charge come to mind.

Tradition is a hard thing to break, though. It’s going to be years before we see the result in our large institutions…if we see real change at all.

Indiepreneurs Can Make Their Own Hours…For Better or Worse

When you’re a self employed individual, finding Work Life Balance no longer comes down to your boss telling you to keep your butt in your seat. Instead, it comes down to you. Your good planning, or lack thereof. Your list of clients and trying to make hay while you can.

As a tax accountant, I certainly understand the feast or famine mentality. I mean, it’s called Busy Season for a reason.

Now, I’m not talking about going crazy like the fellow Tim (no relation) Ferriss suggests in The 4-Hour Workweek. The book has some great ideas, but they’re unlikely to be implementable for most people.

There’ are specific steps you can take to make things go smoother (which I talk about in other posts, like finding the ideal client). For now, though, I want to talk high level.

Determining Priorities

There’s a saying in Accounting (and I’ve heard it said for lawyers as well) that making partner is like a pie-eating contest where the winner gets more pie.

I’ve worked plenty of those insane hour work week. The reward? Proving that I’m able to work more hours if pressed.

When that happens, I’ve taken a step back (or sometimes pushed back) and been forced to ask myself a few important questions. When you’re in the weeds, I recommend you ask yourself these questions, too.

Your time is your most valuable resource. How are you spending it?

Personal example: I had a job that went from working me 50 or so hours a week during busy season and 30 hours a week the rest of the year…to 70+ hours a week during busy season and 45+ hours a week the rest of the year. My life was my job. Suddenly, the things I loved to do—spend time with my family most of all, but also teaching, writing, playing games, etc.–had to be pushed aside. Was it worth it? As my hourly pay decreased (even as my actual wages went up), I finally put my foot down and said no.

What is your hourly rate?

This can be a tough question when you’re barely making ends meet, but when a client comes along and offers you less than what you could make working the line at McDonald’s, you have to be willing to turn it down.

Sometimes, the thing sucking your time isn’t actually your work at all. It’s those Infinity Pools. The things on your phone that refresh to give you an infinite supply of things to keep you distracted. Those are fine…sometimes. But if you’re losing the rest of your life to figure out the next great thing on Instagram, you probably need to take a step back and reassess.

NOTE: Since apparently I’m referencing a million books in this post, I heard the term Infinity Pool from the book Make Time. This book has a huge list of things you can do to push those Infinity Pools aside…just make sure to get a text version to write down which techniques you want to try, because the list is way too long for audiobook. Speaking from experience.

How’s your health?

If you’re not healthy, everything else will be harder to do. Sometimes, chronic issues will just make life suck, and you have to do what you can. But where you have control, putting your health first is essential to making the other things run better.

Personal tip: when work stress is pushing your blood pressure over 140…it’s time to figure something else out. Which was a catalyst for me leaving Public Accounting a second time.

What are you doing for others?

Here’s a crazy point (pulled from Tom Rath’s book “Are You Fully Charged”, noted above): we’re terrible at knowing what will make us happy. The best way to find joy in our lives is to bring joy to others. Is your life arraigned to do this?

Final Thoughts

Life can suck for all kinds of reasons. Not having the right Work Life Balance is just one potential reason, but it’s a common cause for a lot of that suckiness.

I’ve yet to find a perfect way to balance it out, but the questions above have helped me realize when I’ve needed to make a change. Sometimes, that means giving up on hobbies. Sometimes, that means changing jobs. And sometimes it means doing things just a little bit better.

We’ll go into some specifics things to improve at a later time. For now, though, think about what your priorities are, and think about the time sucks in your life. If you can trade the bad things for the good ones, it can get you a few steps closer to reaching a better balance.