Quality of Life & Startups: Doable?

We are constantly hearing about “quality of life”, especially as employers or employees. I fear though that this topic has almost been perverted to mean something completely different than what is meant. There is the reality that we all face trying to manage our private lives and careers and then there is a lot of the fluff we constantly read about in connection with our careers or private lives.?

Let’s look at the issue a bit more granularly. If you are working in a role where you clock in at 9am, have a fixed routine of work you do and clock out at 5pm, you live in a different world than someone working remotely, without a fixed schedule. Here we already see where discussing quality of life with one person can skew wildly from discussing it with another person. There’s also a huge differentiation between someone managing 500 people and someone who manages no one. I could go on, but the first point should be clear. Jobs and careers come in so many flavours that generalisation is pointless.?

As I live in the startup world and write for that segment, let’s focus on the typical tech startup. You can be either office-based or working remotely. But let me first make some presumptions so we are on the same page (and yes this is a bit of generalisation too). I am presuming that in most tech startups you will have a somewhat flexible schedule. It is rare nowadays that you will be tied to a 9-to-5 workday. I also presume that your day will be broken up into meetings, heads-down work time, calls and other stuff you do in between. I will also presume that a lot of what you do in terms of collaborating with team members will be asynchronous. Finally, I’ll also presume that you may be interacting with internal folks as well as external. External could mean customers, partners or vendors. One thing that should be inherent to this discussion is that as a startup, you live in a high pressure environment and no one is sitting around collecting a paycheck just waiting out the clock.?

So what exactly is quality of life if you ask me? Well, it isn’t about sleeping in until noon after being out partying all night, while living in Ibiza. It’s also not about driving your kids to school every day, picking them up, having dinner with them and putting them to bed, as well as trips on the weekends. It’s not taking extended vacations to hitchhike through Cambodia nor is it getting up early every morning to hike up a mountain, ski down and follow that with coffee. It’s not breaking up your day into segments of deep work, only interrupted by a meeting here or there. It’s also not talking to customers all day and leaving deep work for late in the evening or early morning. Nope, none of this is quality of life. And all of this is quality of life….for some people…..some of the time.?

What I am trying to say when it comes to quality of life for me as a founder and employer is that it is a combination of things. Some people want the freedom to spend time with their kids. Some want recreation. Others want to work when it makes sense for them and so on and so forth. What quality of life IS NOT is lack of effort. It is not a lack of grit and suffering. It will never be EASY. It involves a ton of compromise and sacrifice. WHY? Well, if you want to be a part of a startup and really want to excel in your career, you absolutely must focus on quality of life as well. Otherwise, you will burn out or your health will go to shit. What quality of life though can’t compromise on is WINNING. Startups have to win. For them to survive, they need to have a team that builds a product customers want and they need revenues when selling these products. Or they need a killer product that supports a long-term vision which allows them to raise venture capital which can then fund that phase when revenues are not sufficient to cover costs.?

Compromise in my case is related to family and health. I want to spend time with my wife and son. I also want to remain healthy and balanced mentally. Hence I get up fairly early most mornings to get a couple hours work done before my family wakes. I tend to do sports during my lunch break or late at night so as not to disrupt my working schedule or time with family. I work weekends. Every weekend. I don’t take too many vacations but when I do, it is because I feel the need to get away to recharge…..not because I need vacation. I am building a business I believe in and I want to WIN. I will compromise on many things to achieve that goal. I don’t go out much with friends. I also don’t spend much time as part of clubs or pursuing hobbies. I love to read but it usually is business related. I hardly ever watch movies or TV. My compromise is that it is work, family, health and not much else.?

For others, the compromise will look different. They may hike up that mountain or take a dip in the ocean because they live in Colorado or Fiji. Maybe they don’t have kids or they do and instead really don’t ever sleep much. Some might prioritise clubs or hobbies or sport because mental health is more important than physical. But what will clearly unite everyone’s quality of life in a startup is a ton of compromise. There is no way around it. If you work for a startup, you have to be giving it your best when working. You have to optimise what you do so you as an employee are better than the thousands of others, in competing startups, trying to eat your lunch. For some people, it will mean 14 hour days. Others can work 14 hours a week and deliver. Results matter.?

There is no rule as to what quality of life generally means in connection with startups. What is essential though is the realisation, that for both one’s private life and work life, to function well when in a startup you must be able to define what is important to you as an employee and as an individual outside of work. You have to know what you want and what you don’t want. You have to be able to prioritise winning at work and at home. You must compromise because you can’t have it all and some things will lose out.?

Such compromise is inherently a part of the startup journey. You have to be OK prioritising and letting some things go to make something amazing happen. And don’t mourn what you are ‘giving up’ because that is the road to misery. Focus on what you want to achieve both at work and at home and derive your sense of purpose and quality of life from the ‘mission’ you have opted for. If you do not derive energy and joy from what you’re trying to achieve with that which you prioritise and instead focus on what you are giving up, there will be no definition of “quality of life” that will work for you.?