Achieving a Work Life Balance at an Internet Startup
To quote Luke… “You ask the impossible”. Although making your boss at work and your family at home happy may not be as difficult as lifting an x-wing fighter out of a murky Degobah swamp with nothing more than your thoughts, it is still quite the challenge.
Everyone wants more. Your family wants more of you. Your board of directories want more. Your employees and co-workes want more. No one is ever happy with the amount of time you are able to devote to them.
A manager at a startup should expect to work 50 to 60 hours a week. Find an amount within that range that is sustainable, and try to stick to this. I find that I can do 10 hours a day during the week, and 5 hours over the weekend. So to get your hours in and be the most productive you can, try out these tips.
- Try to do 8 hours in the office, and 2 at home during the week. Sitting next to your spouse on the sofa in the evening allows you to multitask: spending time with the family while working.
- Be home for bedtime. If you have kids, make sure you are home at least 3 times a week for bedtime. I find that I can leave work around 6pm, get my kids bathed and put to bed, eat, then get back to work. Life is short, and you shouldn’t miss this special time of the day.
- I like to be home at 5 on Fridays, so I will work one late night a week so that I can cut out early on Friday.
- Save email for later. I find that addressing my email at night, when I’m a little tired, is a good use of my brain in a tired state. Doing this regularly gets people used to expecting 24 hour turn around on emails, rather than immediate response. Plus, doing email all at one time at the end of the day allows you to not get interrupted during the day.
- Use your time efficiently. Eat lunch at your desk. Get a smartphone with email. Your drive to work is a great time to check mail.
For those times that your spouse looses their patience with you, I suggest reminding them that if building a successful business was easy, everyone would do it.
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About
Thanks for visiting! My name is Keith Forsythe and this is my blog about product development, product marketing, mobile devices and general business practices at an Internet Startup.
I am currently co-founder and Director of Product Development at RideCharge, Inc (Taxi Magic), a startup mobile and web taxi booking service. Prior to RideCharge, I was an IT project manager as CVS/Caremark, and a software engineer at Baxter Healthcare. I have a MS in E-Commerce Technolgy from DePaul University and a BS in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana.
Other than not having kids and checking email at convenient stopping points throughout the day, I mostly stick with these ideas myself. Unfortunately, even the “Your drive to work is a great time to check mail” bit.