Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar,

00:00:01 ◼   ► a show about independent iOS development.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:04 ◼   ► - And I'm David Smith.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes,

00:00:08 ◼   ► so let's get started.

00:00:09 ◼   ► - I have a little hesitation there.

00:00:10 ◼   ► You're almost at 15.

00:00:11 ◼   ► - Almost.

00:00:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:13 ◼   ► - So this week we're gonna be talking about

00:00:15 ◼   ► work-life balance.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Both of us are independent.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Both of us have had jobs before.

00:00:20 ◼   ► And you did consulting for a while, right?

00:00:24 ◼   ► - I did.

00:00:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I did only very briefly,

00:00:26 ◼   ► so I'm not much of an authority on consulting, but you are.

00:00:28 ◼   ► And so we kind of have these different job types

00:00:31 ◼   ► and the work-life balance can vary a lot between them.

00:00:36 ◼   ► You know, I think full-time employment,

00:00:39 ◼   ► when you're working for somebody else,

00:00:41 ◼   ► you have like a nine to five kind of job,

00:00:42 ◼   ► at least you hope, sometimes it's worse than that,

00:00:44 ◼   ► but that's generally what you're going for.

00:00:47 ◼   ► When you're working full-time for somebody else,

00:00:49 ◼   ► you are kind of not in control of your own work-life balance

00:00:53 ◼   ► to most of the degree.

00:00:55 ◼   ► But that might be a good thing sometimes.

00:00:57 ◼   ► like, you know, the full-time jobs can span

00:01:00 ◼   ► the entire spectrum from worst to best work-life balance,

00:01:05 ◼   ► and it really depends on the job

00:01:06 ◼   ► and the conditions around it.

00:01:08 ◼   ► But when they're good, when you have a nice, easy,

00:01:11 ◼   ► you know, or not easy, but when you have a good job

00:01:15 ◼   ► at a well-run place working on something

00:01:17 ◼   ► that's not totally crazy, that can usually offer

00:01:20 ◼   ► the best and most consistent work-life balance

00:01:23 ◼   ► among all the different employment types in our business.

00:01:26 ◼   ► And that it's most likely to be a healthy work-life balance

00:01:30 ◼   ► when you have a big, boring company

00:01:32 ◼   ► that you're working for,

00:01:33 ◼   ► working on probably something

00:01:35 ◼   ► that isn't that interesting of work to you necessarily

00:01:38 ◼   ► and that won't be the trendy, cool thing

00:01:40 ◼   ► that all the Google people are talking about or whatever.

00:01:42 ◼   ► Stuff that we wouldn't be talking about

00:01:44 ◼   ► on our tech podcast in all likelihood.

00:01:45 ◼   ► You work for a bank or an insurance company

00:01:47 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:01:49 ◼   ► We think of these jobs oftentimes as being boring,

00:01:52 ◼   ► but boring can be really good in a lot of ways

00:01:55 ◼   ► and it can really offer an incredibly healthy

00:01:58 ◼   ► work-life balance if most of the time,

00:02:01 ◼   ► you're not working incredibly long hours,

00:02:03 ◼   ► you're not having to work on the weekends

00:02:05 ◼   ► or when you're home or on vacation,

00:02:08 ◼   ► you don't have to take work with you when you leave work.

00:02:11 ◼   ► So when you have one of these jobs,

00:02:12 ◼   ► that can offer an incredible work-life balance.

00:02:16 ◼   ► And usually, again, it might not be the most cutting edge

00:02:20 ◼   ► stuff in the consumer space that you're working on.

00:02:22 ◼   ► You might not be building the next photo sharing app

00:02:24 ◼   ► or whatever, you probably also won't strike it rich

00:02:27 ◼   ► doing this kind of thing because you probably are working

00:02:30 ◼   ► for a more mature, stable company where you're getting

00:02:33 ◼   ► a typical salary for the kind of work you do.

00:02:35 ◼   ► You're probably not getting a lot of stock or stock options

00:02:38 ◼   ► or at least what you're getting will be fairly

00:02:40 ◼   ► incrementally valuable.

00:02:41 ◼   ► So there are downsides to this, but it can really provide

00:02:45 ◼   ► incredible work life balance because really,

00:02:47 ◼   ► once you leave work, generally you're done for the day.

00:02:49 ◼   ► You don't have to be constantly on call,

00:02:51 ◼   ► constantly doing things, answering emails,

00:02:54 ◼   ► you know, at midnight when you're trying to go to bed

00:02:56 ◼   ► and your boss is emailing you about crazy stuff like that,

00:02:58 ◼   ► usually doesn't happen in these bigger companies.

00:03:00 ◼   ► And they also can usually help manage vacation time

00:03:03 ◼   ► a lot better.

00:03:04 ◼   ► You know, like when you work for yourself,

00:03:07 ◼   ► you know, you can take vacation whenever you want.

00:03:09 ◼   ► But oftentimes, and I think we'll get to this,

00:03:12 ◼   ► oftentimes that's kind of a bad thing as well.

00:03:15 ◼   ► When you work for a big company,

00:03:17 ◼   ► you usually accrue vacation time

00:03:20 ◼   ► on a certain fixed rate per year that you're working there,

00:03:23 ◼   ► per month that you're working there.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And usually they will even have to pay it out to you

00:03:27 ◼   ► if you quit or get, I don't know if you get fired,

00:03:29 ◼   ► but when you leave, these days are actually accounted for.

00:03:32 ◼   ► So you earn vacation days and you are often forced

00:03:36 ◼   ► to take them or they won't accumulate past a certain limit

00:03:40 ◼   ► so you have to take a vacation kind of thing.

00:03:42 ◼   ► And oftentimes that is better than a kind of freeform

00:03:46 ◼   ► vacation policy where if you're working for a little startup

00:03:48 ◼   ► or working for yourself where it's like,

00:03:51 ◼   ► They were like, "Well, you can take a vacation

00:03:53 ◼   ► "whenever you want, but you can never stop working."

00:03:55 ◼   ► Oftentimes, that work-life balance that you get

00:04:00 ◼   ► at a bigger company or at a more mature company

00:04:02 ◼   ► is just unbeatable.

00:04:04 ◼   ► And then you also have, if you're doing consulting work,

00:04:07 ◼   ► if you decide not to work for a big company,

00:04:08 ◼   ► a lot of people in our business are doing consulting work.

00:04:11 ◼   ► And with consulting, you are much more responsible

00:04:14 ◼   ► for maintaining your own work-life balance

00:04:17 ◼   ► than when you're working for somebody else.

00:04:19 ◼   ► And it's kind of a weird middle ground.

00:04:22 ◼   ► I think consulting, if I had to take a guess

00:04:25 ◼   ► in a broad generalization, I would say consulting

00:04:27 ◼   ► probably offers the least work-life balance,

00:04:31 ◼   ► health of all the different employment types

00:04:33 ◼   ► that I've seen from people who do it.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Because you don't have a full-time boss,

00:04:38 ◼   ► but every client is kind of a boss.

00:04:40 ◼   ► So you kind of have like multiple bosses,

00:04:43 ◼   ► all of whom have different expectations on your time,

00:04:46 ◼   ► And your income is tied directly to the hours

00:04:50 ◼   ► that you are working for them.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And you have to bill them for the hours,

00:04:52 ◼   ► and they are paying for these hours,

00:04:54 ◼   ► so it's kind of hard to waste any.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And so if you stop working for, say, a night or a weekend,

00:05:01 ◼   ► if you stop working, the money stops coming in.

00:05:05 ◼   ► So there's a huge incentive to overwork

00:05:08 ◼   ► and to not have a good work-life balance.

00:05:10 ◼   ► And oftentimes consulting work comes in waves.

00:05:14 ◼   ► So you might have really crazy times

00:05:15 ◼   ► really dry time, that it's kind of hard to keep things in balance there. So I think

00:05:20 ◼   ► consulting is probably the hardest. Then you have indie life, where if you work on your

00:05:24 ◼   ► own products, or if you are the owner of a company, which is kind of different, but if

00:05:28 ◼   ► you work on your own stuff, it seems like you'd have the best work-life balance possible,

00:05:34 ◼   ► but in reality, you have many of the same pressures as consultants do, where you kind

00:05:40 ◼   ► of impose your own guilt on yourself, like, "Wait, I'm not working right now, so I'm

00:05:44 ◼   ► I'm wasting time or I should be always doing something

00:05:48 ◼   ► or this is unproductive time.

00:05:49 ◼   ► And it makes it hard to enjoy a vacation

00:05:53 ◼   ► or even a night off, a night to watch TV with your spouse

00:05:56 ◼   ► or go out or something.

00:05:58 ◼   ► It makes it hard to enjoy that when you work for yourself

00:06:01 ◼   ► and you know that I could be working right now,

00:06:03 ◼   ► I could be doing something right now.

00:06:05 ◼   ► And any time you're not spent working,

00:06:08 ◼   ► the work is just not moving forward.

00:06:10 ◼   ► There's no one else picking up the slack

00:06:12 ◼   ► or the office isn't just closed for the day.

00:06:13 ◼   ► things just stop when you're not working.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And this can often lead to a harder than usual

00:06:20 ◼   ► work-life balance to maintain.

00:06:21 ◼   ► So I don't know, so both of us are the last category

00:06:26 ◼   ► in which the independent developers who work for ourselves,

00:06:30 ◼   ► so, 'cause you don't really do any consulting anymore,

00:06:32 ◼   ► do you?

00:06:33 ◼   ► - I don't, you haven't for a few years.

00:06:35 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, so both of us are totally independent now,

00:06:37 ◼   ► we work only on our own stuff, but I mean,

00:06:41 ◼   ► I guess we, let's start with kind of like a status update.

00:06:44 ◼   ► Like, how do you think your work-life balance is?

00:06:48 ◼   ► - I think now.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Like having now been, I think I've been independent

00:06:52 ◼   ► for about eight years, and I've been,

00:06:55 ◼   ► haven't done consulting for probably three years or so.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Like I've been fully, fully independent

00:07:02 ◼   ► for three or four years now.

00:07:05 ◼   ► I'd say I'm getting pretty good at it.

00:07:07 ◼   ► It's been the result, though, of a lot of effort and time

00:07:12 ◼   ► and thought to get to here, because by default,

00:07:15 ◼   ► you're not gonna have a good work-life balance.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Like, that was the thing that I sort of found

00:07:19 ◼   ► when I sort of quit my day job, and I was like,

00:07:22 ◼   ► okay, it's like, this'll be great.

00:07:24 ◼   ► I'll work from home, I'll be able to be around.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I started going independent

00:07:28 ◼   ► right when our first child was born.

00:07:29 ◼   ► I was like, this'll be great, I'll be home.

00:07:32 ◼   ► I'll be around him as he's growing up, this'll be awesome.

00:07:34 ◼   ► And the default state was terrible,

00:07:37 ◼   ► because I was either, I felt like I was,

00:07:40 ◼   ► I concurrently felt like I was always working

00:07:43 ◼   ► and like I was never working.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Like I was in this weird tension

00:07:46 ◼   ► where I'm always thinking about work,

00:07:48 ◼   ► but I'm also always at home,

00:07:49 ◼   ► and so I'm always thinking about home stuff too,

00:07:51 ◼   ► and it was terrible.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Over the course of the last few years though,

00:07:55 ◼   ► it's like, we've found things that work for me and my family

00:07:59 ◼   ► to be able to be like, okay, yeah, this works.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Like, I feel like I have a good sense of getting work done,

00:08:04 ◼   ► like I'm being productive and useful,

00:08:06 ◼   ► and not just like sitting on the deck drinking martinis,

00:08:10 ◼   ► but I'm also at home when I need to be at home

00:08:13 ◼   ► and my kids understand how that works

00:08:16 ◼   ► and my wife understands how that works

00:08:18 ◼   ► and it seems to be working.

00:08:20 ◼   ► - That's good, yeah, I have a lot to learn from you

00:08:23 ◼   ► because I've been independent since late 2010

00:08:28 ◼   ► and I, so about five years

00:08:32 ◼   ► and I have not found the balance yet.

00:08:35 ◼   ► I kind of oscillate between the former part of what you said

00:08:39 ◼   ► of constantly worrying about work and family stuff

00:08:43 ◼   ► and just not getting enough work done

00:08:45 ◼   ► and then feeling guilty

00:08:46 ◼   ► that I'm not getting enough work done

00:08:47 ◼   ► or feeling regret that I can't do more.

00:08:51 ◼   ► 'Cause I have a certain amount of time in the day,

00:08:53 ◼   ► I've decided, which I think we've talked about it

00:08:54 ◼   ► and I'm sure we will,

00:08:55 ◼   ► I've decided that it is not right for me to hire people.

00:08:59 ◼   ► I don't think I would be happier

00:09:02 ◼   ► or necessarily even more productive if I hired people.

00:09:05 ◼   ► Not even to mention the problem of affording them

00:09:07 ◼   ► and then the other issues with hiring somebody.

00:09:11 ◼   ► So I'm limited by what I can do

00:09:14 ◼   ► and so I feel a burden from that of I should work more

00:09:18 ◼   ► or I wish I could work more.

00:09:20 ◼   ► But then when I have periods of working a lot,

00:09:23 ◼   ► I have a lot of trouble turning it off

00:09:24 ◼   ► to go to sleep at night or to go out to dinner or something.

00:09:28 ◼   ► I have a lot of trouble maintaining that balance.

00:09:30 ◼   ► And so usually I err more on the lazy side more recently

00:09:34 ◼   ► of well, I guess I'll be with my family,

00:09:36 ◼   ► I'll help out around the house,

00:09:37 ◼   ► and I'll be present for everybody,

00:09:39 ◼   ► but then I regret not getting more work done.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And I don't know, I mean,

00:09:43 ◼   ► I still have a lot to learn, I think.

00:09:45 ◼   ► - And I think the thing that comes to mind

00:09:47 ◼   ► is I always remember the insight

00:09:49 ◼   ► that I think was most helpful

00:09:50 ◼   ► when I was trying to work this out several years ago

00:09:53 ◼   ► is it's the understanding that my work

00:09:57 ◼   ► can hurt my family life, as well as my family life can hurt my work.

00:10:02 ◼   ► That I remember when I was starting out, it was easy to kind of think about it as almost

00:10:06 ◼   ► like my family life is the thing that would be hurt from working too much, sort of like,

00:10:12 ◼   ► which makes sense in some ways coming from a more corporate environment where kind of

00:10:15 ◼   ► like workaholism is more the typical problem that you would be worried about, where you

00:10:20 ◼   ► work too much and you never see your kids and all this kind of thing.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And I remember when I first started, that was what I was worried about, that my work

00:10:27 ◼   ► was gonna hurt my family.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And then what I found though is it goes the other way

00:10:31 ◼   ► exactly in the same way,

00:10:32 ◼   ► that my family life can also hurt my work.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And it's the understanding that both of these states,

00:10:38 ◼   ► both of these things are undesirable.

00:10:40 ◼   ► I don't want one to hurt the one or one to hurt the other.

00:10:43 ◼   ► That's why we call it work-life balance, I guess.

00:10:46 ◼   ► You're trying to find something in the middle.

00:10:48 ◼   ► And in the end, what I end up finding is

00:10:50 ◼   ► it's like the old saying,

00:10:51 ◼   ► "Good fences make good neighbors."

00:10:54 ◼   ► the best way that I've found to be able to improve

00:10:58 ◼   ► my work-life balance is to build fences

00:11:01 ◼   ► between my work life and my family life,

00:11:04 ◼   ► both physically in terms of where I work,

00:11:06 ◼   ► in terms of my time, in terms of when I work,

00:11:09 ◼   ► and in terms of the things that I do

00:11:11 ◼   ► when I'm in one place versus the other.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And only when I've been able to really split the two in half

00:11:18 ◼   ► have I found it to be at all functional,

00:11:22 ◼   ► because otherwise you always have the guilt on one side

00:11:25 ◼   ► or the guilt on the other,

00:11:26 ◼   ► and it's neither productive nor helpful.

00:11:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's probably where I have to explore

00:11:33 ◼   ► the fencing off, both physical and scheduling-wise,

00:11:37 ◼   ► because I'm terrible at that.

00:11:39 ◼   ► I work in a home office.

00:11:41 ◼   ► My wife is here with me much of the time.

00:11:43 ◼   ► My kid is here with me much of the time.

00:11:45 ◼   ► He goes to school, but that's not every day,

00:11:47 ◼   ► and that's not all day.

00:11:50 ◼   ► and I work at any hour of the day.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I will work in the morning sometimes,

00:11:54 ◼   ► I'll work at night sometimes,

00:11:56 ◼   ► like it just goes all over the place

00:11:57 ◼   ► and there's really no boundaries to when and where

00:12:01 ◼   ► and how I get work done.

00:12:03 ◼   ► And as a result, it is hard to have long uninterrupted spans

00:12:08 ◼   ► or to not be thinking about work when I'm not at work.

00:12:11 ◼   ► It's hard to maintain this balance.

00:12:13 ◼   ► - And I think the thing that I found most helpful

00:12:16 ◼   ► along those lines is that, as an example,

00:12:19 ◼   ► I end work every day at 5 p.m.

00:12:22 ◼   ► - And you have a martini on the deck.

00:12:24 ◼   ► - And then I go and have a martini on the deck, exactly.

00:12:27 ◼   ► But I found that that one little change

00:12:30 ◼   ► had the biggest impact on my work-life balance.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Before that, it was kind of this squishy, wishy-washy,

00:12:36 ◼   ► like, oh, well, what if I'm in the zone

00:12:38 ◼   ► and I really wanna keep going, or--

00:12:41 ◼   ► - Yep, that's me. - Whatever.

00:12:42 ◼   ► It's like you have this feeling of,

00:12:43 ◼   ► well, it's just, I will work until I'm finished,

00:12:48 ◼   ► type of concept.

00:12:48 ◼   ► And the reality is like, I'm never finished.

00:12:50 ◼   ► There's never like a perfect opportune moment

00:12:53 ◼   ► to be like, yes, I have exactly finished,

00:12:56 ◼   ► tied this function up in a bow,

00:12:58 ◼   ► and now I'm gonna go upstairs and have dinner

00:13:00 ◼   ► and be with my family.

00:13:02 ◼   ► And so we ended up deciding,

00:13:03 ◼   ► and that would drive my wife crazy too,

00:13:04 ◼   ► when it's like, she has no idea when I'm gonna be home,

00:13:07 ◼   ► when I'm gonna, what time we should do dinner,

00:13:08 ◼   ► what time the kids should expect their daddy to be back.

00:13:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, like a three hour window.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Like I wanna be done sometime between five and nine.

00:13:16 ◼   ► Whenever my brain finally turns off.

00:13:18 ◼   ► And so we found it's like, you know what?

00:13:20 ◼   ► I just need to have a regular schedule.

00:13:22 ◼   ► And so I come downstairs, which we'll get to in a minute about workspace, but I come

00:13:26 ◼   ► downstairs to start work, sometimes, like, it's much more squishy, like, sometime between

00:13:31 ◼   ► maybe 8.30 and 9.30, depending on what's going on in the morning, but I always finish

00:13:37 ◼   ► at exactly 5.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And that really helps to be able to say, like, if it's past 5 o'clock, I'm not working,

00:13:45 ◼   ► unless obviously the exceptional situation of some server explodes and I really need

00:13:50 ◼   ► to go and do something. But beyond the extraordinary circumstance, that's what I do. And for me,

00:13:59 ◼   ► that was really helpful to say, "If it's past five, I'm off work. I don't really need

00:14:03 ◼   ► to worry about work, I'll worry about it the next day. And if it's before five, I should

00:14:08 ◼   ► be working." It helps on the other side as well, saying, "If things seem like they're

00:14:12 ◼   ► going a bit tricky with, you know, or like, I just want to be with my family or whatever.

00:14:16 ◼   ► It's like, nope, it's not five o'clock. And I can look forward to it in that sense, and

00:14:20 ◼   ► then once I'm past it, I can say, nope, that's like, that's the firewall against it on the

00:14:24 ◼   ► other side. And having that kind of regular schedule, like, when I'm safe, there's something

00:14:27 ◼   ► magical about five o'clock, like, it could be any time, but having a schedule that when

00:14:31 ◼   ► I'm working, I'm working, and when I'm not, I'm not, has been the only thing, has been

00:14:36 ◼   ► probably the biggest impact in our ability to kind of stay sane around having complete

00:14:41 ◼   ► flexibility about our schedule.

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00:16:48 ◼   ► Under the Radar and all of Relay FM.

00:16:50 ◼   ► - So one thing I wanted to extend on a little bit

00:16:52 ◼   ► is sort of the extension of the concept

00:16:54 ◼   ► of having a defined work schedule

00:16:56 ◼   ► that separates your work life and your physical life is that works in some ways, but you also

00:17:03 ◼   ► what I found, it only really works when you're able to physically separate yourself as well

00:17:08 ◼   ► from the place that you go to work and the place that you go to not work. And I've

00:17:14 ◼   ► tried all manner of things to do this. When I first went independent, it was kind of really

00:17:20 ◼   ► -- the house where we lived in didn't really work for this, where it was a split foyer

00:17:25 ◼   ► house and so there are only two levels. And so no matter what, there was always something

00:17:30 ◼   ► that wasn't my office next door to me, no matter where I went in the house. And for

00:17:36 ◼   ► a while, I actually got office space outside of my house so that I could do this. Even

00:17:40 ◼   ► though I could work from home, I found a teeny little office down the road from where I live

00:17:45 ◼   ► and I'd go there. And now, thankfully, we've changed houses and I have a place that's like,

00:17:51 ◼   ► I'm in this office way off in the corner in the basement that there's nothing else around.

00:17:56 ◼   ► But what I found is if I don't have a separate place to go, like if I'm working in my bedroom

00:18:02 ◼   ► or at the kitchen table or something like that, it's so hard to keep your mind focused

00:18:11 ◼   ► on the thing that you're supposed to be focused on.

00:18:14 ◼   ► And it's one of the things that I think if I give advice to somebody who is starting

00:18:19 ◼   ► out, working from home, going independent, becoming a consultant, any of these things.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Find a place somewhere in your house that you only use for work.

00:18:28 ◼   ► Because when you're there, it's like, "Okay, I'm here, it's all set up exactly how I like

00:18:33 ◼   ► it for working, and I'm working."

00:18:36 ◼   ► And when I leave, I don't come back here unless I'm working.

00:18:40 ◼   ► It's like I don't sit here and go through the family pictures and organize them into

00:18:43 ◼   ► albums on my work computer.

00:18:45 ◼   ► I do that on another place.

00:18:48 ◼   ► other things that I need to do aren't done at my workstation. My workstation is for working.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And that helps both me to be focused and also if you have children or other people in your

00:19:00 ◼   ► house who are going to want your attention, it means that you can find—it sort of has

00:19:05 ◼   ► this great benefit of being able to say, like, "No, no, it's like he's in his—it's

00:19:09 ◼   ► like Daddy's in the office. Don't bother him." And, you know, obviously there's

00:19:12 ◼   ► exceptions to that. If something awesome and cool is going on in the house that I really

00:19:15 ◼   ► want to know about and I should know about. It's awesome that I'm available and here to

00:19:19 ◼   ► see it. But by and large, it's very easy to have that obvious visual separation. It's

00:19:26 ◼   ► like, "Nope, he's not here. He's at work." And then I come home. And my wife and I always

00:19:31 ◼   ► joke about this too, because we'll actually use the terms like "Are you home?" Like if

00:19:36 ◼   ► I go upstairs at four o'clock to get a snack or something, it's like, "Are you home or

00:19:42 ◼   ► are you not?" And it's like, "Actually, I'm not home yet," even though obviously I'm standing

00:19:48 ◼   ► in the kitchen in my home. But it's like, "Nope, I'm actually not home, I just needed

00:19:51 ◼   ► to grab something," and then I go back to work. It's as though I've left. I've gotten

00:19:56 ◼   ► in a car, my commute, rather than getting in a car and driving down the road now, is

00:20:00 ◼   ► walking down the stairs, but I still have one. There's still something separate physically

00:20:05 ◼   ► between my work and my not-work.

00:20:07 ◼   ► That's really good. I like that a lot.

00:20:09 ◼   ► So you've just got to find a place in your house that you can do that.

00:20:12 ◼   ► Yeah, well, in our unfinished basement, maybe, or our hot attic. That should be good.

00:20:16 ◼   ► That'd be perfect.

00:20:17 ◼   ► Well, I'll figure something out. I'll just put up a giant screen in the middle of the

00:20:22 ◼   ► room that I work in.

00:20:23 ◼   ► Yeah. And obviously, yeah, everyone's houses are different, and so whether exactly how

00:20:28 ◼   ► much you can do that and how practical it is to do it. But it's just one of those things

00:20:33 ◼   ► that it's all about trying to make it like make a clear line between when you're working

00:20:38 ◼   ► hanging when you're not working.

00:20:39 ◼   ► And so the more that you can make the place that you work

00:20:42 ◼   ► a place that only is a place that you work,

00:20:45 ◼   ► the better that will be.

00:20:46 ◼   ► And it's like trying to do weird,

00:20:48 ◼   ► I mean, sometimes it is, feels a bit silly,

00:20:50 ◼   ► but it's what I try and do.

00:20:53 ◼   ► We have an upstairs office that we do

00:20:54 ◼   ► other homework things with,

00:20:57 ◼   ► rather than doing them in the same place

00:20:59 ◼   ► that I do regular work, which works for us

00:21:02 ◼   ► 'cause we have two rooms that we can do that with.

00:21:05 ◼   ► but even if you don't have the exact space,

00:21:08 ◼   ► it's just kind of something to be aware of.

00:21:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, definitely.

00:21:11 ◼   ► - And the other thing that I think is helpful

00:21:14 ◼   ► to think about with work-life balance,

00:21:16 ◼   ► like taking a step back.

00:21:16 ◼   ► So things like making good boundaries physically

00:21:19 ◼   ► between your work in terms of your daily schedule,

00:21:22 ◼   ► in terms of your workspace, are helpful,

00:21:25 ◼   ► but there are also things that are kind of,

00:21:27 ◼   ► like they're the tactical day in, day out

00:21:30 ◼   ► kind of things that you can do.

00:21:31 ◼   ► But if you really wanna have a good work-life balance,

00:21:34 ◼   ► I think you also have to take the step back

00:21:36 ◼   ► and look at it and say,

00:21:38 ◼   ► what are the things that are constraining my ability

00:21:41 ◼   ► to have a good work-life balance?

00:21:43 ◼   ► And I think about,

00:21:45 ◼   ► making sure I'm making conscious choices about those things.

00:21:48 ◼   ► One thing I always remember is,

00:21:49 ◼   ► when I used to do consulting,

00:21:50 ◼   ► and this probably applies mostly to consulting,

00:21:52 ◼   ► but applies to a lot of things,

00:21:54 ◼   ► is when I'd start out,

00:21:56 ◼   ► I would check my work email all the day, all the time.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Essentially, if I'm awake,

00:22:02 ◼   ► I'll probably have checked my email in the last 20 minutes.

00:22:06 ◼   ► And I would respond to clients who'd email me something

00:22:11 ◼   ► whenever I saw it.

00:22:12 ◼   ► They would send me an email,

00:22:13 ◼   ► "Hey, did you get a chance to check this thing out

00:22:15 ◼   ► "or fix this thing?"

00:22:16 ◼   ► And I'd respond.

00:22:18 ◼   ► And I'd do it on the weekend, late at night,

00:22:20 ◼   ► early in the morning.

00:22:21 ◼   ► If you know, first thing when I wake up,

00:22:22 ◼   ► I'd pick up my phone and I'd respond.

00:22:24 ◼   ► And what I realized though is that I'm setting

00:22:27 ◼   ► horrible expectations for my clients

00:22:30 ◼   ► Because now, as soon as you do it once, they'll expect you to always do it.

00:22:36 ◼   ► And if you don't, that can become weird, strangely problematic, where they're like,

00:22:40 ◼   ► "Oh, I emailed you and you didn't respond."

00:22:42 ◼   ► It's like, "Yeah, you emailed me at 8 o'clock on a Friday.

00:22:46 ◼   ► I didn't respond because I'm not working."

00:22:49 ◼   ► But if you don't actually follow through with that, you have this terrible boundary

00:22:53 ◼   ► problem.

00:22:54 ◼   ► And you're making these commitments that you may not consciously be making to being

00:22:59 ◼   ► available at times that you really shouldn't be available.

00:23:03 ◼   ► And that might also make certain people not able to work with you. And I think you have

00:23:10 ◼   ► to choose that. When you're choosing what you're working on, the people you choose to

00:23:14 ◼   ► work for or with matter just as much as anything else you're deciding, because certain employers

00:23:21 ◼   ► will want you to be a workaholic and will want you to be 24/7 on call for email. Even

00:23:26 ◼   ► even if they don't technically say that,

00:23:27 ◼   ► that will be what they expect,

00:23:29 ◼   ► and it'll look bad if you don't do that.

00:23:32 ◼   ► Whereas other employers or clients

00:23:34 ◼   ► are more healthy themselves with their work-life balance,

00:23:37 ◼   ► and they will be okay if you don't answer

00:23:41 ◼   ► a Friday night email until Monday morning.

00:23:45 ◼   ► And it's important if you can find those people

00:23:47 ◼   ► and choose to work with them,

00:23:49 ◼   ► and it really matters a lot who you work for

00:23:52 ◼   ► or who your clients are.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And then in addition to it mattering who they are, it's like that you have to decide these

00:23:59 ◼   ► things.

00:24:00 ◼   ► It feels silly at first.

00:24:02 ◼   ► I remember the first time I realized I was doing this, and I would hit reply and start

00:24:10 ◼   ► composing an email back, and then I'm like, "Wait, it's nine o'clock on a Friday.

00:24:13 ◼   ► I should not do this."

00:24:15 ◼   ► And sometimes I'd write it out, but just leave it in drafts, and at 9 a.m. on Monday

00:24:20 ◼   ► morning I'd just go into my draft and I'd sit there and send them all, which was like

00:24:27 ◼   ► a baby step towards not actually checking it in the first place.

00:24:31 ◼   ► But given the illusion of health.

00:24:33 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:24:34 ◼   ► But at least the very least I was setting their expectation that I wasn't available.

00:24:39 ◼   ► I always remember also with consulting you'd have these weird things where you start having

00:24:43 ◼   ► email conversations back and forth with your client at strange hours because you send them

00:24:48 ◼   ► them something and then they are sitting at their computer too having poor work-life balance

00:24:52 ◼   ► and they're responding back.

00:24:53 ◼   ► As you go back and forth, and it's like you're having this conversation at a time when you

00:24:58 ◼   ► would never schedule a call with your client at that time.

00:25:01 ◼   ► You'd never think like, "Oh, this is like 10 o'clock on the weekend?

00:25:04 ◼   ► This is a perfect time for us to have a chat."

00:25:06 ◼   ► But it's like this little trap that just sucks you in, and then you have to work really hard

00:25:13 ◼   ► to break that pattern and get out of that cycle.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And then lastly, the other last sort of like taking a step back thing that I think you

00:25:21 ◼   ► can do to improve your work-life balance is to look at your business and see if there

00:25:29 ◼   ► are places that you can reduce the degree to which your revenue is directly tied to

00:25:35 ◼   ► your time, which in some ways is maybe an obvious thing to say.

00:25:38 ◼   ► Like if you can make money without doing anything, that's better.

00:25:42 ◼   ► This is the promise of like every back page ad in a crappy magazine.

00:25:45 ◼   ► money while you sleep.

00:25:46 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:25:48 ◼   ► But in a not sketchy way,

00:25:50 ◼   ► looking at your business and saying,

00:25:52 ◼   ► the biggest things that are gonna get in the way

00:25:55 ◼   ► of you having a productive work-life balance

00:25:58 ◼   ► are things where you don't have control,

00:26:00 ◼   ► like you don't have the control over your time

00:26:03 ◼   ► in the same way.

00:26:04 ◼   ► If you have a perfectly

00:26:06 ◼   ► split between your time and your money,

00:26:11 ◼   ► then you can choose exactly how you want your day to go,

00:26:15 ◼   ► because your time isn't the thing that you're selling.

00:26:17 ◼   ► That isn't the important thing.

00:26:19 ◼   ► So if you look at a business, I think conceptually,

00:26:23 ◼   ► most businesses kind of fall into two categories.

00:26:25 ◼   ► There's kind of like prepaid work, things like consulting,

00:26:29 ◼   ► or even this podcast where we get

00:26:31 ◼   ► paid by a sponsor for the episode.

00:26:34 ◼   ► But we have to make the episode, and then once we've made it,

00:26:37 ◼   ► we get no more benefit from it, to things

00:26:40 ◼   ► that are kind of like postpaid, so like a product

00:26:42 ◼   ► or a subscription, or if you have a retainer in consulting,

00:26:46 ◼   ► like those types of things, where you're making money

00:26:47 ◼   ► without you having to do something directly.

00:26:51 ◼   ► Usually it's because you've done something else in the past,

00:26:53 ◼   ► but in the present, you're kind of living off the interest

00:26:57 ◼   ► from the past things.

00:27:00 ◼   ► And this was something that was the big,

00:27:03 ◼   ► like when I made the shift from consulting to products,

00:27:08 ◼   ► which is now what I do, almost 100% essentially,

00:27:11 ◼   ► of my income is from products, is I wanted to do it because I felt like if I didn't,

00:27:18 ◼   ► I wouldn't have control over my time, because I was always going to be beholden to somebody

00:27:23 ◼   ► else. And so I had to look at my business and say, "You know what? If I can do this,

00:27:27 ◼   ► if I can keep pulling, even if it's just 20% of my business is coming from something other

00:27:34 ◼   ► than my time, I'm going to be able to make my work-life balance 20% better, or at least

00:27:39 ◼   ► the opportunity to make it 20% better.

00:27:42 ◼   ► If I don't follow through at that point, that's on me.

00:27:45 ◼   ► If I, at this point, have complete control over my time and I have a bad work-life balance,

00:27:50 ◼   ► there's no one to blame but myself.

00:27:51 ◼   ► I can't blame my boss, I can't blame my clients, I can only blame me.

00:27:55 ◼   ► But on the flip side, I have the ability to control that.

00:27:59 ◼   ► So looking at your business or looking at the way that you're structuring how you work

00:28:03 ◼   ► such that you can break those ties is sort of like the little catalyst that allows you

00:28:08 ◼   ► you to make any of the changes that we've talked about

00:28:12 ◼   ► in this episode, because if you don't have that control,

00:28:15 ◼   ► then you can't change anything in the first, you know,

00:28:18 ◼   ► anyway, and so you're kind of stuck.

00:28:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that separating your income

00:28:24 ◼   ► and your business health from your time spent

00:28:27 ◼   ► is obviously, like, that is the holy grail,

00:28:29 ◼   ► but it isn't that unachievable.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Like, it's actually very doable, and it might take a while,

00:28:34 ◼   ► and it might not be 100% of your income

00:28:36 ◼   ► being separated out that way

00:28:37 ◼   ► and being independent of your time.

00:28:39 ◼   ► And you do have to still work on it occasionally.

00:28:42 ◼   ► You can't neglect things forever,

00:28:44 ◼   ► but anything that you can do to build up

00:28:47 ◼   ► a back catalog of things that pay you

00:28:49 ◼   ► or build up recurring revenue streams

00:28:51 ◼   ► or things that are decoupled at all,

00:28:54 ◼   ► you will benefit from significantly.

00:28:56 ◼   ► - Exactly, and it took me four and a half, five years

00:28:59 ◼   ► to be able to stop doing consulting.

00:29:02 ◼   ► But it was a conscious choice

00:29:04 ◼   ► that this is where I'm heading.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I'm pointing my business in this direction,

00:29:08 ◼   ► and that's what I, because at the end of it,

00:29:10 ◼   ► I like the result, and so that made the work

00:29:12 ◼   ► to get there worthwhile.

00:29:14 ◼   ► - Excellent.

00:29:15 ◼   ► All right, thank you for listening, everybody,

00:29:17 ◼   ► and that's all the time we have,

00:29:19 ◼   ► so we will talk to you next week.

00:29:21 ◼   ► - Bye.

00:29:22 ◼   ► [ Silence ]