Pick your priorities

Most of the people I know what work themselves to the bone and complain about work life balance do not have their priorities straight. From the beginning, my primary object for both my day job and various businesses was to free up additional time. I have had a few surprises over the years and make more than my fair share of mistakes but I keep coming back to this north star. Freedom is the goal and time the metric.

You have a lot more time than you realize. Our goal is not to get more time but really just reduce waste. That is what time management is, not better managing the time you do have, but getting rid of all the pointless crap that does not need to be done. And one of the first places to start is with choosing the right job.

I think all business owners should start out as employed individuals who want more freedom. Do not burn the boats and think you will immediately start making $100,000 a month. That may not work and it is super risk to try. Instead, give yourself a launching pad, so that you have room to make mistakes and learn.

Of course, all jobs are not created equal. For example, should you take a job that pays 50 percent more but requires you to work eighty hours a week? Or take a lesser paying job that allows you to work forty hours? How much is your free time actually worth? Granted, not everyone has the luxury of choosing a comfortable day job but I have found that most people tend to chase money over lifestyle and that is slippery slope. I have done it myself and do not recommend going down that road.

Once your start making more, your start wanting more. Every raise is soon forgotten and you start seeking even more responsibility and even higher pay. Pretty soon, you are working your butt off, so that you can stay at a job that was never meant to be permanent in the first place. Welcome to the state that many find themselves in, working jobs they hate to support a lifestyle. Do not do that.

One key in getting over this hump was realizing that climbing the corporate ladder job was not going to lead to freedom. It was, in fact, going to create the opposite, slavery. With your business, you can easily make more money working fewer hours by leveraging computers and technology ot do the heavy lifting for you and that worth so much more.

Once I realized that time was the real asset. I started making deliberate decisions to focus my time on my own income generating opportunities and really, it started with finding any opportunism I could to get my time back. If you can, choose the job that demands less but allows you to get by while you build your dream. In five years when your life looks completely different, you will be glad you tool the road less travelled. It really does make all the difference.