by Nick
Posted on August 17, 2024
Inspired by My First Million Podcast | Scott Galloway’s Controversial Opinion about Work Life Balance
This is something that I am grappling with at the moment. I have a lot of things that I would like to accomplish and skills that I would like to learn. I am having a hard time balancing everything and I believe that is because I am not 100% clear on my priorities. I am trying to be the best family man that I can be, work on my career and be a provider, learn business skills, be intentional with my time, have time for friends and family, have hobbies, maintain some sort of physical fitness and health, keep up with chores, etc. I have not been the best at managing my time, planning and being disciplined, and communicating what it is that is important to me. I have made a bunch of plans but have fallen short on communication, incremental improvement, and execution. This is where I honestly believe the difference is made.
In pursuit of this I have been working on implementing the strategies from the 12 week year, a book by Brian Moran. If I am able to truly incorporate the strategies in this book I think that I can get to where I would like to be. One thing that I have noticed I fall short on is communication with Tiff and consistent execution. I am hoping to write some more in the future about the 12 week year and how I am incorporating it into my life.
Transcript from video
My students, I'll ask them how much money they expect to be making by the time they're 35 and about 90% of them expect to be in the top 1% which is $750,000 a year in America. Then they'll talk about that like that's what I expect but I'll say what's most important to you in your life and moving forward and a lot of the time they say balance. And I'm like so you expect to be in the top 1% by the time you're 35 but you also believe you're going to have balance in your life? I mean, I've never seen that, you can have it all you just can't have it all at once and by the way that's that may not be the way to go you may sacrifice you may say I want to live a nice kind of balanced life I'm going to move to a suburb of St. Louis, coach little league, work 40 hours a week be a good citizen, find a good partner, nothing wrong with that but the majority of the people I know the young people think they're going to be in the top 1% and also have balance in their life and I just think it's ridiculous. I'm like okay the only way to get there to achieve that is if you have one thing and that's rich parents. Otherwise, back to go all in on your career or scale back your expectations around your economics and your influence because it's a competitive market and one of the things people can control is how hard they work.
I don't think you want to work so much that you sacrifice your health or your relationships there is going to be some trade-off with your relationships. I didn't see my kids a lot when they were little. I was divorced I think it was a contributor to that I was always working in services companies and never saying no to any opportunity the CMO of Samsung can you be in Seoul tomorrow for a board meeting, sure I can. You I mean I just said yes to everything to try and move the company forward but uh I I for a long period worked very very hard and sacrificed a lot and it it takes a toll and I did it such that I could have a lot more balance now. But this notion the myth of balance get over it if you expect to be influential or economically secure you're not going to have a lot of balance for a long period of time.
Some people are such Geniuses that they can work a modest amount of time make a lot of money, workout, have a great relationship with their parents, be fit, donate time at the aspca, and have a food blog. Assume you are not that person so just have a sober conversation and also have a sober conversation with your partner about how much money do we expect to have who's responsible for making it. What's your approach to spending where are we going to live you know the number one source of divorce is not um infidelity or lack of shared values it's usually got something to do with money. And also 70% of divorce filings are filed by women who still and we don't like to say this because we like to pretend women have no agency and that they're just doughy little foes uh is the man loses a business becomes broke or has a mental breakdown when a man loses a status as a provider he's very inclined to be on the wrong end to divorce so I think a lot about young men I think a lot about financial sec security I think every man should start with the notion that he's going to be responsible for the economic well-being of his household and by the way sometimes that means getting out of the way and being more supportive of your partner who happens to be better at that money thing than you and that's a wonderful thing but start from a position of this is my responsibility and make sure you're aligned with your partner around this stuff. Because the thing we don't talk about is that your kids are going to have higher blood pressure if you're economically strained kids in kids in low-income households have greater systolic resting blood pressure than kids in middle and upper inome homes you're much more likely to get divorced you're much more likely to have a stroke you're much more likely to be the victim or the perpetrator of domestic violence when you don't have money I mean America becomes more like itself every day and that is it's a loving generous place for people with money it's a rapacious violent place for people who don't have money.
So all this money doesn't buy you happiness oh my God is that a myth. I'm not saying you need to be incredibly wealthy but middle-income people are happier than poor people and wealthy people are happier than middle-income people that's the bad news the good news is that tops out you get diminishing returns and you have to be cognizant of when you do get to some level of Economic Security that's the means the ends is such that you can have an exhale release the anxiety that you feel and then use the opportunity to really spend a lot of time with your your loved ones and cement those relationships and the problem is you get on the hedonic treadmill and you becomeso absorbed in your own success and your professional identity and money and making more money that you never get to the ends you wake up a wealthy person or someone who's financially scar always thought about their economic well-being and you don't really have a great relationship with your kids or you never really leaned into your partnership and thought okay let's take time to really enjoy each other's company let's do nice things your parents die before you have a chance to really spend time with them as adults I think that happens to a lot of people they just get so caught up and I need the next promotion I need the next amount of money. Once I get here I have someone very close in my life it's a family member and I'm taking them to Africa and they're like making excuses, but our kids in the choir they were making excuses.
I'm like you realize this is your last chance to go to Africa before you're dead right you're 50 years old when are you go when you're 70 but you gotta get back to work an extra day I mean what are you thinking we're going to be dead soon and I I just think so many people don't realize how fast it's going to go by and never really never really like super not only super lean into the relationships but just allow themselves just to have a great time. I'm going to Stage Coach this week I'm going to go to Country Music Festival I Can't Stand country but I'm going I'm going to buy a pair of boots I'm going I'm going to have a great time and I'm going to do an edible and I'm going to drink a ton and I'm going to have a rested adolescence with my friends and I'm going to look ridiculous and it's like yeah why why not why the not what am I going to do watch C-SPAN all weekend I mean anyway I I can't stand it when people who are blessed with being in this country have some level of Economic Security at people in their life that love them and they love and they don't like crazy lean into it because you guys are younger than I can it just goes so goddamn fast it's just crazy it is just crazy how fast it goes.