Time to Make a Difference
Many of us would like to leave a legacy behind. But distributing money and having buildings or scholarships in our names aren’t the only way to do it. Neither is having children, which is a good thing for us childless cat ladies! When you look only to the future, you miss out on what you could be doing today.
The great thing about legacy is you don’t have to choose only one thing. Kids are not in the cards for me, and (at least at the moment) I’m not a billionaire either. I have written a couple of books that were finance-related, and I’m really excited that my book on the LaserBrainTM method of productivity is coming out next year! (Toot toot.)
But of course you can also make a difference by volunteering, for whatever cause you want to support. I’ve volunteered at a humane society’s cat shelter, taught reading to adults, ushered for a symphony and now sit on the council of another one. There are plenty of excellent opportunities out there for pretty much whatever interest you’ve got.
One important way for business owners to make a difference is to have a mission that’s served by their company. I know women entrepreneurs who believe in bringing more human connection to the world, who have courses on networking and how to use LinkedIn. Others want to support small business owners, so they train on sales or building a business or website design or whatever’s in their wheelhouse.
October 26 is Make a Difference Day, and I’m trying to make a difference with my business. My mission is to help business owners have a life outside of their thriving business, so they don’t lose out on the important things in life.
Why I think work-life harmony is important
Notice I didn’t use balance! Many people don’t believe that balance is possible. (I think it is, in the sense that a “balanced portfolio” doesn’t necessarily mean half equities and half bonds but can also be 60/40 either way.)
I don’t believe that balance is possible every day, at any rate. Maybe it evens out over years if you’re intentional about the life part. But there are seasons of life too, times when business owners, especially women, are also taking care of children and/or elderly parents and work really does need to take a bit of a back seat.
I’ve read the surveys about people at the end of their lives who talk about their regrets. And none of them have ever said, I wish I’d worked more. In fact, one of their top wishes is usually that they’d worked less and spent more time with family and friends.
I also think my financial planning background comes into play with this as well. (Finally, a way to marry all that experience with productivity!) Many people, especially if they’re corporate high achievers, think that they’ll be able to enjoy life when they retire. They’re definitely saving up for it, and they can probably afford a good lifestyle.
If they get there.
That’s the piece I think a lot of people who don’t work in retirement or elder health spaces don’t see. Just because you work hard, save up, and forgo vacations because you need to spend that time climbing the corporate ladder doesn’t mean that you will get to retirement able-bodied and able-minded. All your hard work and achievements do not guarantee that you will get to enjoy your golden years.
Things happen. Life happens, and you don’t have control over it. The older you get, the more likely something is to go wrong. If you have a stroke or heart attack, or succumb to Parkinson’s or dementia, you don’t get that enjoyable retirement you planned and saved for.
Now, many people do go on to have great golden years where they finally get around to doing some of the things they’ve always wanted to do. But if you wait too late, your body might not physically be up for more strenuous adventures.
That’s why it’s so important to take time NOW. Don’t put off your vacation in 2025. Do something you’ve always wanted to do so you can experience it while you're relatively young and healthy.
Contrary to popular belief, taking time off actually benefits you when you come back. Freeing yourself of thinking about work for one thing allows your subconscious to ruminate on issues and challenges, so when you return you might find you’ve finally got the energy to solve it. (Direct your out-of-office emails so the correct person(s) handle the sender’s inquiry while you’re gone so you don’t come back to a pile of work.)
But also, your brain needs a break. Your prefrontal cortex works very hard, and it’s earned some damn time off. Play and socialize with the people you love and do the non-business activities that you enjoy. This isn’t just good for productivity, but for mental health overall as well.
However, it’s not just about vacation. Your prefrontal cortex and executive function can only go for so long, for evolutionary reasons. The brain needs a break after every 60-90 minutes of focused work where you can hydrate, play with kids or pets (or spouses, but it;’s a quick 10-15 minute break!) take a short walk, or even just stare at the wall. No emails or “social” media during this time.
And it’s critical for both health and productivity to stop work during the day for an extended period of time. Have dinner with the family, spend time reading to the young kids, doing whatever hobbies or activities you enjoy, getting in physical movement.
That’s what work-life harmony is about. I think the world would be a better place if we Americans weren’t so stressed out all the time. If we spent more time in our communities, instead of holed up in the house or the office staring at screens. (Yes, introverts need to spend some time holed up in the house so we can recharge, but that doesn’t preclude getting out on a regular basis.)
How I support my mission
Modern American culture is not designed for any kind of harmony. We still have the Puritanical idea that getting to “heaven” (or being a good and moral person) requires hard work for long periods of time.
It’s noteworthy that these ideas date from a time when humans really had no idea how the brain works. And when labor was primarily physical and not too taxing on the prefrontal cortex so working all day wasn’t as difficult for the brain as it is now.
Medieval peasants got more days off during the year than Americans do. Even though I’m sure that wasn’t a great life to lead, they still had plenty of time to do other things besides work. Hundreds of years later, we really should be better off than medieval peasants!
Modern work completely ignores the strengths and weaknesses of the human brain, which is part of the reason I always include brain facts when I’m speaking. I’ve also devoted an entire chapter in my upcoming book (toot toot! Out early 2025) to how the brain works.
Because for knowledge workers, including business owners in any field, your brain is your primary tool. And if you don’t know how best to use it or care for it, you’re capping your accomplishments much lower than necessary.
We often think of work in terms of machines, including computers. You put in X hours of work, you get Y. If you double X, then you should get double Y. That’s generally how it works with machines.
But that’s not how the human brain works. If you are past a certain number of hours (like 4 or 6) and you double that, you don’t get twice the results. The PFC (prefrontal cortex) doesn’t provide that amount of power. With long hours you end up using more of the emotional mammalian brain, which usually means poor decision making.
Brains require frequent downtime, but the good news is that the things you enjoy outside of work, like hanging out with loved ones, doing enjoyable activities like crafts or hobbies, joining a rec league team if you like sports, and other non-business items help your brain recharge and refresh.
But you need to take time away from business to do these things, and many business owners are afraid if they spend fewer hours that their businesses won’t grow. The key here is that they’re spending more hours because they have more distractions and interruptions, so they don’t spend much of those hours in focused work (where a lot can get accomplished in a much shorter span of time.)
The other issue I find is that business owners do more of the things that they shouldn’t be doing as the owner of the business. Even solopreneurs can outsource or automate a lot of the unimportant stuff, which frees up time for focus on the key drivers of the business.
With my business and the ways I work with clients, I help them reduce the distractions and find more time to focus. That means in the same set of hours they can accomplish much more. We also work on what the priorities are and how to delegate, outsource, or automate what business owners should not be working on.
Business owners are my primary clients for a couple of reasons. One is, I’m a business owner myself and I understand what the challenges are in running a business. (Believe me, I know about challenges!)
The other is that they have a lot more flexibility to change the way they and their staff work. One of the main factors in productivity is the time you spend on focused work, and that means no interruptions. No emails, no phone calls, no “social” media, no notifications, nothing. Corporate America still seems to believe that every email needs to be answered right away, which means that they’re extremely resistant to the idea of scheduling time to read and respond to emails.
Honestly, business owners struggle with that too. But once they experiment with a distraction-free zone themselves, and see how much they can get done even in a focused work session of an hour and a half notification-free, they can at least implement it for those deep work sessions.
Recap (tl;dr):
I believe the world would be a better place if we were all a lot less stressed and spending more time with our loved ones and interacting with our communities. To that end, I help business owners free up time for better work-life harmony by helping them accomplish the key factors that drive their business forward in a shorter amount of time.
Does more work-life harmony sound good to you? Please click here to set up your free consultation.