The Work Life Balance - Myth

Having finally reclaimed my seat, after an apparent misunderstanding and chain of musical chairs, my train quietly leaves the station bound for Shanghai, and home. An hour or so into its 6.5hrs journey I playing catch-up with the many articles that land in front of me about business ideas, growth strategies, and, inevitably, strategies for achieving work-life balance. 

Probably the 3 staples of successfully creating and building any businesses.  After all, you need to find a very strong starting point for your business, you need to figure out how to build that business effectively, and you’d ideally like to run a successful business without going completely mad!

As someone who creates and builds businesses we have no choice but to develop sound business ideas and growth strategies. The very success of our businesses depends on our ability to achieve strength in these areas. 

However, while I completely understand the desire for a work-life balance, I fear that this has become the holy grail. From my personal experience, work-life balance for any one creating and building a business is at best an idealized and exaggerated conception - a myth - and a dangerous one at that!

Is it possible to build a business and have a work-life balance? Conceptually, I suppose it’s possible. Statistically, I’m open to it. Indeed, those far more learned than I claim to have actually discovered it. I may even agree, if I could find a business idea that will succeed on its own!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m always seeking ideas that can run themselves, and for good reason, because it forces me to eliminate ideas with very little merit or customer pull. The perfect business idea that runs and builds itself does exist somewhere, but I’ve never actually seen one. 

But like many others I know that I know, we have all started and built businesses that found customer success. However, in every case, what we all have in common is that have all worked and continue to work with an almost unhealthy level of obsessive passion, caring, focus and dedication that arguably borders on the unhealthy. 

It’s not just that I consider a work-life balance is unlikely for people like me. Rather, in my experience, being obsessive in businesses has been an ingredient in our success.

To understand the toll that running a building business takes, we need to make a distinction between working hours and obsessive hours. Most successful creators and builders of businesses that I know work significantly more hours than most people. I doubt any of us count our hours. We are not paid by the hour, but we are so invested in what we do that we mentally do not clock in and out.

There’s also the crucial distinction between hours that we put in at the office and the amount of work that we take home or spend on holiday! Probably aren’t necessarily putting more hours in at the office that our colleagues.  However, if you compare the number of hours we obsessively thinking about our businesses, you’d see a significant difference between the likes of us and others. In other words, those of us creating and building businesses may not be physically at work all of the time ( … we also have obsessive hobbies!), but we never really leave work. 

We are ultimately responsible for every part of our businesses. For that reason, we are always thinking about something or other to do with out businesses. Again, we have no choice. We must.  The consequences ultimately fall on us.

To help you  understand this dangerous myth of a work-life balance, it may help you look at this from our prospective. 

Bear with me here. Work-life balance, relies on two presumptions. First, work and life are distinct, and second, the life part is equally, if not more, important than the work elements. If these two points are true for you, then you’re probably not someone who creates and builds businesses. 

We are our business. We are our work. We are obsessive. For us there is no line dividing work and life, because we don’t consider our business as a separate entity from ourselves. Wherever we go, we are bringing our work with us. And if you can turn-off from your business, you’re probably not going to be successful or at best, not as successful as us.

I say this with absolutely zero judgment or disdain for those who can separate themselves from their work. In fact, the ability to compartmentalize and separate work and life is a very valuable trait. It probably leads, in many ways, to a much more content and happy existence. 

However, for those who feel obsessed by creating and building businesses then face reality: you can have work-life balance, as long as the two are one in the same.