Working hard, or hardly working?

“Making right or wrong decisions, if it’s a free country why do I feel trapped by the cost of living?”

Skirmish (Rhyme Asylum), This is where, Solitary Confinement.

Hey you!

It’s been a minute since I’ve written to you, so I thought I’d reach out.

You know, for the first time in my life I have a stable, reliable income.

I’m working Monday to Friday in a coffee roastery, I know what my pay cheque will be every week, and I get all the perks like sick leave, paid holidays and over time. This is all new to me, because for the past ten years I’ve been skydiving professionally, which is seasonal work where the income fluctuates greatly. Either that or I’ve had casual jobs, with fluctuating hours, and my pay cheque was rarely ever the same two weeks in a row.

For the past ten years I’ve also worked every weekend, at the detriment of my social life.

Now that I have the stable income I can make a budget and am able to live within my feedom number. But the allure of the extra money still has me working on weekends sometimes, I just can’t seem to let it go.

The problem is, even though my salary does cover all of my expenses; my rent, groceries, bills, car maintenance etc, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of money to play with.

Living in cheap accomodation and only buying groceries with yellow discount stickers does mean that I don’t need to work weekends, but if I do then I have extra cash to play with. But then if I work weekends I don’t have time to do anything. Can you see the problem here?

Another difficulty in the work-life balance puzzle is that if I was to spend more time at work, outside of my rostered hours, I could do things that progress my coffee career forwards faster, but this would mean sacrificing more of my already limited free time.

The other pitfall I have often fallen into is that when I do work 6-7 days a week, my life ends up revolving around money, and then because I’m always working I think I should be able to enjoy my money so I buy the toys I want, eat out at restaurants and do more online courses. This ultimately leaves my bank account in the same position as if I wasn’t working weekends, and I’m back to square one.

I believe the solution to this problem is delayed gratification. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and am really working on implementing it into my life.

You see, instead of thinking about how we can achieve something tomorrow, if we think about it in terms of months, years or even decades, most of our dreams are much more achievable. Most people could have six pack abs, own a Ferrari or buy a million dollar house with a long enough time commitment.

The fallacy of most lofty short term goals is that they’re either so overwhelming that we don’t even try, or we try for a month or two and get so disheartened by our lack of progress that we give up entirely.

By extending my time horizon on my financial goals, for example, I wouldn’t be burdened with the stress of working every weekend, knowing that I have a plan in place to reach my end goal.

I think the biggest issue for me is that always prioritising work over socialising has left me feeling isolated and lonely. When all you do is work, you start to look at the financial cost of every hour of your day, and socialising doesn’t pay the bills. It has been proven, however, that the biggest determining factor to people’s happiness over a lifetime isn’t their career advancements or the amount of zeros in their bank accounts, it’s the friends they’ve made along the way and the strength of their relationships.

I don’t want to just work a nine to five until I’m carried by six.

I give you full permission to hold me accountable to actually prioritising socialising and not just working all the time. How do you go about managing your work-life balance? I’d love to know.

I’m glad I got to spend this time with you, and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Until then, I hope you’re well and happy.

Big hugs,

Your friend Ben.

PS. Remember this quote:

“Most people over-estimate what they can do in a year, but under-estimate what they could do in a decade” - Tony Robbins.