“Work-Life Balance” – adamtcroft.com

A reader once wrote me asking how I handle “work-life balance”.

As in – when you’ve got family relationships and responsibilities (wife, kids, etc) – how do you handle being mentally all-in at work and mentally all-in with the rest of your life?

Hooo boy.

Let me first say, I’m no authority to speak on “work-life balance”.

Take what you read here as my opinion, and worth a grain of salt. Okay?

“Adam, if you’re not an authority on this – why write about it?”

I hear you say. Well, the same reason I write about most anything else – either someone asked me, or I feel like it. In this case, both.

So, I’ve got 3 thoughts for you. These things count even if you aren’t in a relationship or have kids. I find that we love to overwork ourselves – whether it’s doing something legitimately productive, or procrastinating and calling that productive, it still expends energy regardless.

Pair Down

First thing’s first – if you feel overwhelmed or “off balance” – you’re probably taking on too much.

That may or may not be something you can do anything about. If work has you pulling 70 hour weeks as a requirement, there isn’t a heck of a lot you can do. If you’re pulling 70 hours a week because you feel like you have to or the world will fall apart without you – that is when you need to reanalyze and test your theory.

Doing too much often confronts us in unexpected ways, though. You might find yourself trying to build your skills to get a technical sound designer job, in that case you’re probably looking at a long list like:

Learn Wwise
Learn FMOD
Learn 3+ programming languages
Learn everything ever about sound design
Get great at interviewing
Learn how to build a brilliant resume
Network all the time

Etc. etc. – right? Then you try and do all of those things all at once.

Recipe for disaster. You can’t really even do 3 of those at the same time, though you’ll try (learn middleware, network, learn how to build a great resume).

I personally found myself in this spot within the last month, because this is what life looks like right now:

Be a solid husband
Kick out solid work at my 9-5
Write a guide on ChucK programming
Plan my independent work for the rest of 2019
Write emails twice a week
Attend, and do homework every day for C++ Certification class
Help manage and operate an eBay store
Enjoy life (read, hit the gym, etc)
Sleep

That’s a lot. Honestly, it’s too much. But frankly, I didn’t know that until I got here.

I told you I’m not an authority on this.

Before you feel sorry for me and write me a bunch of emails about how it’s cool if I slow down or don’t put out content – don’t bother. I appreciate the sentiment, but part of experience is learning through failure.

The trick, in my case, is to get through it and not do it to myself again.

So don’t be like me – okay? I know we love to work – or look productive – but here’s the smarter thing to do.

Pair down, prioritize.

But how do you actually do that?

Prioritize

Ugh, that word. That “prioritize” word sucks, doesn’t it? It makes you feel like you don’t have your ducks in a row.

And well – you don’t. It’s okay.

Here’s the thing about ducks. They’re adorable in baby form, they’re beautiful, funny, and majestic in adult form. But, guaranteed no matter what age, those suckers hate traveling in straight rows.

So, as soon as you get them in a row, sooner or later they’re going to get right back out of line.

I treat this as a near daily exercise.

I’ve got a bullet journal

(not what you’ll find if you google image search “bullet journal” – I don’t use washi tape, and I use one black and one green pen)

and every day I write in it. The best part is that the journal has no rules. None. Any day I’m allowed to do whatever I want in it. Pretty much every day I do the same thing, but the rule is that there are no rules. So the day where I have a total freakout over my life being a mess? Completely cool.

Most days involve making a list of what I have to get done that day, which I get to check off with my nice green pen. I also write the date, the day of the week, and a running list of life goals that are important to me. Those goals are off the top of my head – they’re free to change any and every day.

I back this up with OneNote – where I store larger lists of everything I need to get done in a specific week, and what my goals are for the year at large in various forms (personal, vacation, and work). I also have tracking notebooks for individual projects I’m working on, things for my company, business memberships, and yep – my wife.

You might read that and go

“Wow, Adam’s REALLY got it together – look at all of that organization!”

I assure you – it’s nothing like that. Most of it is at least halfway to a complete mess – which brings me back to priority.

I’m in my journal every day. I’m in these notebooks every week. Because of that, I’m regularly assessing what matters and what doesn’t.

For example, just this past weekend I had an extra bullet point on the active list of things I’m doing:

Daily practice and learn DSP math

Saturday I took a look and just went “nope, too much right now.”

Do I want to learn DSP-related math and be able to make my own audio filters and understand what in the world is going on? Yes! Do I have time for it and is it a realistic priority right now? Sadly, no!

So, as much as you can, ruthlessly – ruthlessly – cut the crap that doesn’t matter. Store it somewhere you’ll review later, and you’ll get back to it.

It’s a Long Game

Here’s the biggest point of the three – and where everything you’re trying to balance really gets its roots from.

The game you’re playing – life – for most of us hopefully, that’s a real long game.

Let’s assume the adage that it takes 10,000 hours to master a subject (I don’t fully ascribe to this, but it’s a good metric for our story here). If you spend 3 hours a day working or practicing your subject of choice – it will take you ten years to achieve mastery.

I don’t spend that much time writing – so I’m screwed, no?

Jokes aside – here’s my point. Whatever you’re practicing takes time. It takes a lot of time.

Today – where everything is about immediate, instant gratification

(and by the way – assume that’s only going to get worse, not better – as soon as there’s a legitimate mass market neural implant/link we’re all super screwed)

it’s easy to forget that. It’s actually difficult to remember, know, or even learn that.

But in this case I think my vocational story does a great job of illustrating that you’re not tied down to one thing permanently and you don’t have to pick the rest of your life today.

In 10 years of doing audio I’ve recorded bands in studios, done live theatre work, live events, concerts, movies, commercials, television, designed AV systems for giant buildings and structures, done post production, shipped DVDs of my work, and worked on some of the biggest video game releases of the past few years.

In short, I’ve been all over the place. Completely “ADHD” with my work.

It’s not because I’m special, or smart, or had some kind of leg up on everyone else. I lost a parent early on in life, nearly dropped out of college, went into a load of debt, repeatedly undercharged and worked for free, moved to Seattle on a whim, used a tax return to pay my rent one year, and I’ve never been the best at what I do.

I’ve made almost every mistake in the book – and I largely learned to get out of that by watching people further along than me make mistakes and complain about it. Then I’d say to myself “oh, I shouldn’t do that because I don’t want to end up like that”. Nobody really told me what to do.

So, if you’ve got 8 million things you’d like to do and you’re reading this, looking at me like

“Pair down and prioritize? BUZZ OFF dude – I don’t have time! I need a job!”

That last part might be true – but I assure you that you do have time. You need to give yourself time, and give yourself some patience. Busting your ass and learning Wwise in a week is rarely going to be the difference between you getting a job next week and not getting that job.

Putting it Together

Here’s what I’m suggesting

Pair down – do less
Prioritize – take that less, and make sure it’s all the important stuff (or pair down again)
Take your time – it’s a long, long game you’re playing

When you’ve done that, you’ll find that overall there’s less on your plate to do. Because you’ve gone through it and you decided, you’ll know what’s important.

Then make time to tackle that stuff daily, and in that time you’ll need to give yourself a break.

It will also be a lot easier to find “free time”, and then you just need to check yourself and make sure you want to spend it on your spouse, family, or whatever else. If you’re avoiding your relationships for work – that’s a whole different problem.

Again, I’m by no means the king of this.

I don’t have my life in order. My life’s not perfect. I’m always busy.

But, I hope that’s also comforting to you. Because honestly – nobody’s going to have all of this perfect, ever.

If you’re better than you were at it this time last year, that’s pretty awesome though, no?