Workaholism & Family-Work Life Balance

The inspiration for this month's topic came from my 7-year-old son. While recently helping me with a project he says:

"Work smarter Dad, not harder"

It immediately occurred to me how contrasting this was to when I was 7 years old helping my Dad and Grandpa on the farm. Back then it seems the days were measured by how many hard working hours you could put in as the jobs that needed to be done on the farm never stopped.

However, I will always remember my Dad and Grandpa as family man too, just as I do many of the farmers I've worked with over the years. But, certain things change with the generations.

Faith - Family - Farm

As important as faith and family are for many farmers I know, it doesn't change the fact the majority of them have a difficult time breaking away from the work that needs to be done on the farm. I was reminded of this recently when a retiring farmer admitted he has a real problem, an addiction to the farm he said he can’t let go. And, as his eyes began to well up, he said his wife would even tell me it’s affected their marriage. Infidelity he said, not with another woman, but rather, the farm.

Another farm I worked with was struggling with how to communicate between the three generations on the farm. When I asked each them to rank family, faith, and farm in the order of highest priority. Interesting enough, the youngest generation ranked family first. The generations above ranked the farm first, because you can’t raise a family without the farm.

Good times & bad

In all fairness, the older generations have been through some difficult ups and downs during their farming careers. Some fought tooth and nail just to keep the farm together. Farming was more labor intensive, and long hours were put in. This is a factor that makes it difficult to transition or retire from something that they fought so hard to build and in some cases just maintain what they had.

The topic of workaholism and retirement came up at a recent peer group gathering of other farm transition planners. We’ve all seen this, and unanimously believe we need to remove the "R-word" retirement from our vocabulary. Instead of retiring, how about we change the conversation to what else the older generation can “transition” to? Multi-generational farms need to accept that the identity for many retiring farmers is the farm itself.

Work-life balance

I think a lot of our elder farmers would say finding "work-life" balance is a bit of a joke. However, it's clear to me that the actions and words from one generation will impact those of the next. And, prioritizing time for family and finding the right work-life balance is clearly a trend in the multi-generational farms I work with.

This doesn't mean the farm isn't just as important, but rather, a difference in how much we define success or a "good days work" by how many hours were put in.

Finding a cure

The truth is there's no cure to workaholism. Perhaps the best cure is simply becoming more self-aware of it, and accepting it's ok if certain members of the family farm measure success by hours. For them, this provides a sense of fulfilment. And, typically fulfillment fuels joy and happiness.

Hello, my name is Mike Downey, and I help farmers and ag professionals grow, diversify and transition their family legacies through farm business coaching & written succession plans.