Having a work-life balance is very important. You don’t live to work, you work to live. You work to pay the bills and have a comfortable life.
I’ve previously mentioned that it’s worth knowing how much it costs to fund your lifestyle. This is very important so you know how much you need to earn in order to keep a roof over your head and food on the table. If you can work smarter, not harder, all the better. It’s a great feeling to know that you only need to work three to six months a year to pay the bills for the whole year. You can then take time off or have long breaks between employments.
When I first started dating my wife (to-be), she was an employee with an annual holiday allowance of 25-days. We would look at the calendar for the upcoming year and note all the bank holidays and take those 25-days and use them to make weekends longer here and there and bank-holiday weekends even longer. We worked out that we could have short breaks every month. We would plan out where we were going next, somewhere in our home country or maybe abroad. Both the holiday itself and the anticipation of the upcoming holiday helped maintain a great work-life balance. We would often have 12 holidays a year. One year we had 14!
Another thing I like to do is to take “me days”. These are days when I know that no one is going to be home during the day. My wife will be out and the kids will be at school and I’ll have the place to myself. I’ll book it a month in advance so both my clients and family are ok with the date. Then I’ll start planning what food I’ll have. Maybe pizza or a takeaway. What snacks I’ll have and what beer I’ll be drinking. Not the large packs of beer but a carefully chosen selection of real ales from independent breweries. Then I’ll choose what video game I’ll be playing or movies I’ll watch. It may sound strange to you but this is heaven to me. I’ll get up, have my favourite breakfast and I’ll probably stay in my PJs all day long. I’ll play my video games and watch TV with no interruptions. After lunch I’ll open my first beer and continue gaming until the family comes home. Sometimes they’ll just leave me gaming till bedtime. Bliss!
Your “me day” may be different. Maybe you prefer a spa day or a day at the golf course or racetrack. Whatever your preference, the key is to just take a me day every once in a while to unwind, chill-out and enjoy yourself.
I had a colleague once to whom I explained the concept of ‘me days’ and who informed me that he couldn’t do it as he’ll be leaving money on the table. His thinking was that a day off meant a day’s money lost. Going from contract to contract working every day to earn as much money as you can is no way to live. Would you not rather enjoy what you do and be able to afford to take time off whenever you wanted?
Another rule of mine is that I don’t work my birthday. It’s the biggest ‘me day’ of the year so no way am I working that day. I’m far too busy celebrating me.
One other thing I’d like to point out about a good work-life balance is that the power people have over you is an illusion. Think about that for a second. When you are interviewing and are negotiating terms, at no point in the conversation does your new client say “..and I will have the right to berate you, to talk down at you, to shout at you when I feel like it, and generally treat you badly”, yet this happens. I’ve had clients shout at me as if they own me. They don’t. If you let them treat you this way then you are giving them the illusion of power and they will continue and this can lead to stress, anxiety and other mental health issues developing. The trick is to nip this in the bud quickly. Do it calmly and professionally but make sure that they understand that this is not acceptable and that if they cannot continue to be professional then you are prepared to walk away from the contract.
So remember that your health and well-being comes first. You are working so that you and your family can have a good life. You are not working just to work or just to earn money. You want a great life and you need money to do that, but not at the expense of your well-being.
Family and health come first!
Tag: worklifebalance
Don’t just work for money
Early on in my career I found myself at a large corporation where, after a project ended, they were reluctant to let me go. To keep me on they loaned me to another team, with my original team covering my invoices. The catch was that the new team didn’t have much work for me, so they assigned me the task of developing a Test Strategy document for an upcoming project.
By the end of the first week I had a draft ready for the project manager’s review. He suggested some revisions, and we agreed to meet again the following week for further discussion. Making those changes took only an hour, but this pattern continued for months. The new team had little for me to do, opting to leave me to my own devices while checking in weekly to review that one document.
It became increasingly absurd, especially when the project manager began critiquing the font choices and justification in the document. This “work” stretched on for six long months. I stayed primarily because I was awaiting an upcoming project with my original team, which promised to be much more engaging—and, of course, for the paycheck.
Those six months taught me a valuable lesson: I never wanted to work solely for money again. It was painfully boring, and life is too short to spend it counting down the hours at a job that doesn’t inspire you.
Realising that the company had no intention of releasing me, I began taking walks around the campus instead of sitting idle at my desk. I explored the on-site cafe, library, and communal areas, meeting and chatting with others while adhering to security protocols. This experience highlighted the importance of networking.
Now, when I wake for work and suddenly realise it’s the weekend, if my first thought is one of disappointment because I can’t work that day, I know I’ve found a job I enjoy. That’s the criteria I apply to every new contract I consider: it should be fun and interesting. Working with great people is a bonus.
Reflecting back to my school and university days, I fondly remember being part of the Amiga demo scene. I loved when my parents occasionally would leave for the weekend, allowing my friends and me to set up our computers in the living room. Over those weekends, we coded, created graphics, composed music, and assembled software to release. It was a blast—we enjoyed beer, pizza, and anime while working late into the night! For us, it never felt like work; it was pure fun. That’s what I seek in every job opportunity: a project that excites and entertains me.
Don’t just work for money.