Are You Optimizing For the Wrong Things as a Business Owner?
What’s more important to you: a fulfilling life or a great business that you started?
(BTW, you can have both… but probably not the way you’re working right now.)
When you think about how you structure your days, do you think about work first? Or about other responsibilities (kids, parents, pets, whatever)? Or activities you want to do?
When you try new apps or methods that will increase your productivity, is the primary motivator how to do more work in your business? Or get the necessary work done faster so you can attend to other activities?
American work culture is based on the ideas that more work is better, being busy and appearing busy are both important, and that faster is better (among other things).
But what if… those three tenets aren’t always true? In some situations, faster is better. And if you go from not enough work, where you’re barely getting by, to more work that brings you more money so you can start taking some bucket list trips… then yes, more work is better.
Being busy isn’t important. Not if you’re a business owner! What you need are activities that help you grow and sustain your company, and busyness is not only not helpful, it’s actually antithetical to it.
You may not think you’re optimizing for busyness over accomplishment…
First of all, if you do recognize yourself in some of the things I’m about to list below, don’t feel bad about it! Like I said, this is American culture. This is how many of us were taught to work, or how people before us worked
What you might not realize is how bad this culture is for our brains.
We’ve seen our diets grow more saturated (!) with engineered food designed to hit the salty/sweet/fatty trifecta to keep us buying that food.
We’re sold software that has been enshittified (per Cory Doctorow) because the people who buy the software in a large company don’t use it themselves … and it makes our lives harder.
We’ve been told that every single email or phone call or Slack message could be really important, so all notifications must be on at all times.
We’re told that we can get everything in a convenient package so we don’t have to do any work or think about what we’re putting in our bodies. (Never mind the fact that our bodies NEED to move and our brains NEED to be exercised too.)
We’re told that typing comments on a keyboard is the same as seeing another person and conversing with them using our voices, so there’s no need to get off the app. Even worse, said app has been deliberately designed to activate the variable rewards system, which keeps us on the platform longer so we can see more ads.)
We’re told that AI is going to automate all the systems and people won’t be needed any longer.
We’re told the best place to cut back is on staff, so retailers stopped hiring store clerks and now everything you need is hidden behind a lock to prevent shoplifting. Good luck waiting for the one clerk on the register trying to get a whole line of people through checkout to come and unlock it for you.
And of course we’re told that work is good but more work is better. Since you come home exhausted at the end of a long, long day with no energy left, an array of manufacturers have risen to provide you with unsatiating snacks and plot-by-numbers streaming shows.
I’m sure I left a few things out. But you get the picture. This propaganda is pretty persuasive, so I really want you to understand that it’s not your fault you get home completely exhausted and make some choices that maybe aren’t completely optimal for your life.
The thing is, they’re not optimal for your business either.
Why? Because your business is dependent on your brain, and these things are bad for your brain.
Not only are these things bad for your brain now, they could also cause some serious problems when you get older – cardiovascular conditions, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, etc.
Optimizing for a fulfilling life is important, because you don’t know what will happen in the future
Part of the reason that I hammer on the topic of “don’t wait until you’re retired to do things you want to do” is because I have been there when people waited until retirement and then couldn’t do the things they wanted. Or someone in their family didn’t plan, and they got screwed.
As a former financial planner, I have some absolutely heartbreaking stories. I think all of us planners have them.
I had one client whose brother was supposed to be paying her to care for their elderly mother who had early-onset Parkinson’s disease. He didn’t pay for respite care. Incidentally, this is one thing that I REALLY hate about our culture: that women are responsible for care, that they should volunteer to do it, and keep doing it without complaints or any kind of break no matter how long it takes.
Her mom died of complications from the Alzheimer’s, and although she was obviously sad that her mom died, she could now have a life.
A couple of months later, she started showing symptoms of early onset Alzheimer’s herself. And she knew what was happening, which just made it even worse.
Another client had a brother with serious disabilities that meant he could never live by himself. Her nonagenarian mother controlled the money and where the brother lived. She refused to tell our client where the bank accounts were, the information for the agency, or any of it, because she “wasn’t planning to die”. Well, guess what happened.
Our client had to ransack the house looking for information, money, and the rest of it, because of course she was now the one responsible for her brother. (Get your estate plan done. You WILL die at some point. Do it now.)
In addition, I’ve always been the kind of person who’s interested in different things. The whole time I was a financial planner, I kept writing. I’ve written my own books and ghostwritten others. I’m taking cello lessons and improv classes now as I research my future book on cults (in addition to the productivity work, of course.)
I’d go on trips occasionally, but I didn’t necessarily spend a lot of time traveling, though I do enjoy it. I just figured that I’d be like my mom’s family, which tends to be pretty long-lived – my mom had an Aunt Jenny who lived to be 103. My dad died when he was 66, but he was a smoker all his life.
My mom died more recently at age 77, which isn’t super young. But it’s also not 103. And after she died, for whatever reason, it hit me that I, too, could die in my 70s and not my 90s or 100s. I don’t know why that had not occurred to me before.
So if in my 50s I’m closer than I thought to the end of my 4,000 weeks, then that changes my calculations about how I want to spend my time. I’ve done two bucket-list trips (Atacama desert in Chile, safari in Kenya) in the past three years. I won’t do one this year, but am looking at something for 2027.
Are you absolutely sure you know when your life will end – so you know how much time you have for the non-work activities you’ve always wanted to do?
Having a life outside your business brings rewards now and in the future
Another thing that I learned as a financial planner is that some people really dread retirement, because they don’t know what they’ll do with themselves. You can only hit the golf course so often, as an avid golfer told me.
I’ve heard a lot of people, especially younger ones, say they’ll work for the rest of their lives. That is just not reality, whether you want to be able to work that long or you’re worried about finances.
I’ve worked with people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. When you’re in your mid to late seventies and older, you will not be able to work full time for a living. It’s just not in the cards either mentally or physically, even if you have a desk job.
In my experience, admittedly anecdotal, age 75 or around there seems to be the limit. On the one hand, you don’t have to worry about having enough money to retire at 65 if you don’t want to. Although you likely couldn’t do a very physical job, if you’ve kept your brain in good shape you can probably still work a decent number of hours to get the income you want in your 60s.
Having other activities that you do outside of your business will help you ramp down when you’re older, whether you keep pushing until your 70s, or you decide you’ve had enough of full time work and want to reduce your hours before then.
I’ve heard of people retiring and losing their social connections because their only friends were at work. (Mostly men, but not exclusively.) Needless to say, this can contribute to depression and feelings of isolation. When you spend time now on activities that you enjoy or with friends outside of work (or both), you’ve got something that doesn’t go away just because you leave your job.
The same advice that keeps you productive now – exercise, rest, sleep, social connections, nourishing food, interesting activities – not only gives you an offramp at retirement time, but also helps protect your brain and body from diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Recap (tl;dr):
If you only think of productivity in terms of cramming more work into the workday, you’re missing the opportunity to build strong connections and enjoyable activities that help you stay productive now and also prepare you for the future.
Do you have bucket list activities but you’re worried that if you go on vacation the place will fall apart without you? I can help you be more effective so your business thrives and
So.
Do.
YOU.
Schedule a call for your free consultation and assessment.
Photo by Morgan Housel on Unsplash.