First up an apology. I usually publish Mondays and Wednesdays but this week went pear shaped for reasons far too boring to go over. Even so, apologies to those who are regular readers. In future I’ll aim to publish Tuesdays and Thursdays as that suits my rhythm better. On to the topic at hand.
Earlier in the week I read about a female lawyer who quit her job during the pandemic and made a career change. I won’t link to it as I found some of the comments disgusting, patronising or outright mysogynistic.
She was a 20 year career lawyer who’d made partner but was working an insane number of billable hours. She was making good money as a corporate lawyer but the expected work rate was crazy. Think 3,000 billable hours p.a., 250 per month or roughly 60 hours per week. And she has two children at home that needed care and home schooling. Her husband’s ability to help was limited because he works in the U.K. health service. Even knowing all this, she was called upon to take over the work of a colleague. That was an addition to what she was already doing.
Bear in mind that billable hours are not the same thing as working hours which are inevitably longer, depending on other tasks that need to be performed. That extra work requirement was the straw that broke the camels back.
I’ve heard similar stories elsewhere. Most recently an estate agent told me that lawyers in their area are under strain with some retiring or simply quitting. They’ve had enough.
At this point I should say that I don’t have a lot of love for lawyers but I’ll save that rant for another day.
I’ve also read that one of the reasons the U.K. has a lorry driver shortage is that the work involves very long hours for meagre pay and is hazardous at the best of times.
I remember when I moved to San Diego CA. being shocked at the fact many people needed to work two jobs to make rent and pay the bills. For some it was normal, for me it sounded awful.
But then I look back at the last eight years of my working life and realised that I was largely pursuing a 24x7x365 day ‘career.’ I excused myself in the grounds that I was in the good company of other hard working startup founders. There was just one problem. I’m old and as 65 rolled around I suddenly found that my appetite for the work was evaporating.
Whatever the excitement in startup land my body started to say ‘you’re done.’ It was a strange sensation. I’d never been afraid of long hours, am fortunate to have a highly supportive life partner and had almost gotten used to 4-5 hours sleep at night, or, more likely, early morning. But my body was slowly yet relentlessly telling me to quit. It manifested in several ways.
First, I was permanently tired often veering towards exhaustion. Second, I started to pass out for an hour or two in front of the computer screen and not notice. Third, I had little energy to do much beyond tap the keyboard. Fourth, I started to lose interest in what used to excite me.
I was lucky enough to be in a position where I could adjust and pass stuff on to others but it wasn’t quite enough. It took another three years before I could hang up my digital spurs but by then and much like the woman I mentioned above, I was all but burned out. I was living to work. And I was pretty miserable.
By contrast, my eldest son works four days a week. He looks after his son one day each week to give his wife a break, is always trying to find things to do with his family at the weekend and helps his wife with her bridal management and floral business. He’s happy. He works to live.
The question then comes, at what point does the work ethic instilled into my generation become toxic? After all, I was doing a job I truly loved and believed in. Yet looking back I now view it as something that was slowly killing me and doing precious few favours for those around me.
I’m fortunate. I was able to retire with a healthy bank balance and, provided I spend sensibly, I need never have money worries. But then I look around at those who don’t have those same choices and wonder what needs to change for our collective lives to be better.
We are told that technology will improve our lives. Yet that isn’t happening at the pace needed for working people to reap the benefits when the flip side seems to involve more, not less work.
I am now hearing of folk who hold two jobs to pay bills in much the same way as some of our American cousins have been doing for years. Unless they have independently wealthy parents, students have to work and take on debt in order to complete university studies. Is that right?
So - for those who have a choice, my question to you is this: is it worth it?
This is an important topic and work/life balance was always extremely important to me and one that I made a lot of effort to balance but it wasn’t always easy, took a lot of work, great time management as purposely chose 7 years ago to stop being a road warrior and give up customers that were not in alignment and let me work remote which was a risk at the time but it ultimately didn’t impact my successful career.
Enjoyed this blog on the topic by a friend of mine that is relevant to this topic.
https://steveark.com/2021/03/08/work-life-balance-or-success/
I see a lot of people that are ultra successful in careers but struggle in their home life which was not something that ever was appealing to me as having an extra $ in the bank and not being there for my wife/kids would have been as empty as it gets.
This is from a friend of mine that deals with a lot of wealthy folks in his career who knows me well and made me happy when he said
“I always thought you did a great job of keeping your family and relationships healthy despite personal success, while I have seen other friends/clients have serious challenges and live very empty lives” #Humblebrag