milkshakelake
Structural
- Jul 15, 2013
- 1,120
I'd like some advice, mainly from engineers who have been doing this for a long time. I'm having trouble finding a work/life balance. This is going to be a long post so I can explain my situation accurately, but feel free to give generic advice and not read the post. I totally get it.
Background:
(A) I run a small engineering company (me plus 5 employees). This drains kips of time because success depends mostly on me. My decisions, including marketing, which employees to hire, and how to train them, are keeping this ship sailing. I feel responsible for myself, every employee, and their families. The employees and clients have placed their trust in me, which I cherish. Therefore, I have to sacrifice my own time whenever needed. This results in working extra hours and weekends sometimes, because the work ebbs and flows.
(B) I have a family. After work, a large part of my evening is doing housework (dishes, cooking, cleaning, laundry, bills, etc.) and helping the kid with homework. My wife also works and shares these household responsibilities equally. On weekends, I teach the kid math and piano (there are tutors for both, so it's mostly helping with the homework/practice), and sometimes we have family trips or shopping, so even the weekends are booked.
(C) I spend an average of 45 minutes per day bodybuilding, doing yoga, and meditating. This is the one non-negotiable item I can't compromise on. But it eats into the daily schedule.
My goals:
(i) I want more time for hobbies like video games and art. I have a miniscule amount of free time for myself.
(ii) I want to expand my company to make more money so I can retire early and have infinite free time for aforementioned hobbies. Let's say retirement in 10-15 years. This conflicts with (i).
(iii) I want to expand my engineering knowledge. I used to study engineering for 1 hour every day for 7 years, but when I started my company/family, there was no time for that. Therefore, I have major gaps in useful knowledge (things like strut-tie model and finite element analysis). My ego is wrapped up in this; it stings when I see questions on this forum that I can't respond to. I can only spend 2-3 hours a week on study now, if any time at all.
(iv) I want to do difficult, long term things to grow the company, such as learning programming so I can better hire programmers to automate some tasks. And 3D printing so I can send a beautiful model of the project to clients when it's done, so they keep us in mind. And making a course for architects to get more exposure. And getting ICC certification for steel inspections. And expanding my IT knowledge to get more self-hosted Linux apps working to streamline the company. I understand that it's nearly impossible to do all of this without major sacrifices.
Potential solutions:
(1) Two engineers have told me that my days of studying are over. I'm inclined to believe them. Therefore, I'm thinking of completely removing the goals of expanding engineering knowledge (iii) and not doing any of the difficult long term growth goals on my own (iv). I have enough knowledge to be a competent engineer, and it's the time for me to use those skills to make money instead of endlessly expanding those skills. I have to rely on learning a little bit every day incidentally from the work itself instead of focused studying.
(2) Regarding difficult long term goals (iv), once the company expands and there's more money to play with, I will hire people to do them. This may be 3-5 years down the line.
(3) I've always heavily invested time in making work and household chores more streamlined. Things are fairly optimized, but I need to think deeply about finding more such solutions.
Problems:
(a) Almost every solution is conflicting with something else. For example, letting go of difficult long term expansion and engineering knowledge (1) directly conflicts with expanding the company (ii). I'm having a hard time figuring out what compromises to make, because I'm well aware that I can't do it all.
(b) It's hard to just give up on improving my knowledge, because I was always a stickler for self improvement and lifelong study.
(c) Any time that could be spent on long term business improvement (iv) or studying (iii) is much better spent on improving the business today. It's more productive to optimize workflow (3) and do daily work to get projects out on time and done with quality, therefore retaining clients and increasing reputation. Again, maybe it's just my ego, but it's hard to dismiss the notion of self improvement in the first place (b).
Background:
(A) I run a small engineering company (me plus 5 employees). This drains kips of time because success depends mostly on me. My decisions, including marketing, which employees to hire, and how to train them, are keeping this ship sailing. I feel responsible for myself, every employee, and their families. The employees and clients have placed their trust in me, which I cherish. Therefore, I have to sacrifice my own time whenever needed. This results in working extra hours and weekends sometimes, because the work ebbs and flows.
(B) I have a family. After work, a large part of my evening is doing housework (dishes, cooking, cleaning, laundry, bills, etc.) and helping the kid with homework. My wife also works and shares these household responsibilities equally. On weekends, I teach the kid math and piano (there are tutors for both, so it's mostly helping with the homework/practice), and sometimes we have family trips or shopping, so even the weekends are booked.
(C) I spend an average of 45 minutes per day bodybuilding, doing yoga, and meditating. This is the one non-negotiable item I can't compromise on. But it eats into the daily schedule.
My goals:
(i) I want more time for hobbies like video games and art. I have a miniscule amount of free time for myself.
(ii) I want to expand my company to make more money so I can retire early and have infinite free time for aforementioned hobbies. Let's say retirement in 10-15 years. This conflicts with (i).
(iii) I want to expand my engineering knowledge. I used to study engineering for 1 hour every day for 7 years, but when I started my company/family, there was no time for that. Therefore, I have major gaps in useful knowledge (things like strut-tie model and finite element analysis). My ego is wrapped up in this; it stings when I see questions on this forum that I can't respond to. I can only spend 2-3 hours a week on study now, if any time at all.
(iv) I want to do difficult, long term things to grow the company, such as learning programming so I can better hire programmers to automate some tasks. And 3D printing so I can send a beautiful model of the project to clients when it's done, so they keep us in mind. And making a course for architects to get more exposure. And getting ICC certification for steel inspections. And expanding my IT knowledge to get more self-hosted Linux apps working to streamline the company. I understand that it's nearly impossible to do all of this without major sacrifices.
Potential solutions:
(1) Two engineers have told me that my days of studying are over. I'm inclined to believe them. Therefore, I'm thinking of completely removing the goals of expanding engineering knowledge (iii) and not doing any of the difficult long term growth goals on my own (iv). I have enough knowledge to be a competent engineer, and it's the time for me to use those skills to make money instead of endlessly expanding those skills. I have to rely on learning a little bit every day incidentally from the work itself instead of focused studying.
(2) Regarding difficult long term goals (iv), once the company expands and there's more money to play with, I will hire people to do them. This may be 3-5 years down the line.
(3) I've always heavily invested time in making work and household chores more streamlined. Things are fairly optimized, but I need to think deeply about finding more such solutions.
Problems:
(a) Almost every solution is conflicting with something else. For example, letting go of difficult long term expansion and engineering knowledge (1) directly conflicts with expanding the company (ii). I'm having a hard time figuring out what compromises to make, because I'm well aware that I can't do it all.
(b) It's hard to just give up on improving my knowledge, because I was always a stickler for self improvement and lifelong study.
(c) Any time that could be spent on long term business improvement (iv) or studying (iii) is much better spent on improving the business today. It's more productive to optimize workflow (3) and do daily work to get projects out on time and done with quality, therefore retaining clients and increasing reputation. Again, maybe it's just my ego, but it's hard to dismiss the notion of self improvement in the first place (b).