Work/Life Balance: Job, Side Hustle, Husband, Father, etc.

My friend, Debbi O’Reilly (a resume professional out of Florida), asked me if I “find work-life balance more, or less, achievable now?”

She is asking because of my recent transition from full-time entrepreneur to having a full-time job.

Well, days ago my schedule looked like this:

Get up around 6 or 7 (I can’t remember) and do some JibberJobber work for at least an hour.

Work out

Around 8:30 Leave for a full day of work. Leave the office a little after 5pm (they strongly encourage us to leave at 5pm so we can have a life outside of work)

Got home, wife was gone with a friend that evening, and I was going to hang with the kids and do cool stuff. Instead, I slept on the couch from about 6 to 8:15.  Bleh! But I was so tired.

8:15 to 9:00 play cards with said kids, lots of laughing and fun.

9:00 to 10:00 bedtime routine with kids, pillow talk with wife. Then crash hard.

Yesterday was better because I didn’t have a nap, so I got a lot of family time in (ended the day with cards on the deck, which was awesome). Today I rolled out of bed at 6 and here I am, doing JibberJobber stuff.

So, that’s some context into how my day goes: a mix of me time (workout), Bamboo work time (always a full day), JibberJobber time (it’s great to have Liz spinning so many plates, but I jump in almost every day to help), and family time (we have five kids, and I have a wife I love).

Before I got my job I was on JibberJobber almost 24/7. It consumed my thoughts all the time. There was no balance. Of course, I got things done, but sometimes I thought “I should really be sitting at my computer right now doing JibberJobber,” or “I don’t have time to work out, I need to do more JJ email.” JibberJobber was the main income source that I was working on, and doing other things felt like I was “cheating on” JibberJobber. It was consuming.

When I started researching BambooHR I heard one of their founders say something to the effect of not calling it work/life balance, but just life balance. I loved that. A couple of weeks into my job, at about 5:10 p.m., the CMO walked into my bosses office and told us that it was after five, and time to go home. “The work will be here tomorrow.”  That was absolutely crazy to me. BambooHR works hard to reinforce their values, and has measures in place to help us really work on life balance.

That I am expected to NOT work more than the normal 8 hour day at BambooHR is awesome. Of course, I think about my projects and initiatives when I go home. Just yesterday I work up dreaming about a project. That’s human nature. But they really push the idea of going home and doing whatever we need to refresh ourselves, and after 3 months (tomorrow is my 90 day anniversary) it is settling in. I’ve been a bit of a very loyal workaholic for my career, and they are teaching me a different way of life. I hope that way of life permeates down to my JibberJobber team, and they can benefit from it, too.

To answer Debbi’s question, when I’m not at work, I’m present wherever I am: with my kids, on a date with my wife, working on my side hustle, hanging with my neighbor, etc. I’m definitely more present, and have much healthier balance. And I love it. I hope this lasts for a long, long time.

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