%20life%20%E2%80%9CWorklife%20balance%E2%80%9D%20positions%20work%20as%20something%20that%20is%20in%20opposition%20to%20%E2%80%9Cthe%20life%20we%20should%20be%20living%E2%80%9D,%20to%20%E2%80%9Cthe%20life%20we%20deserve.%E2%80%9D%20But%20.png)
The current trend of advice and focus, particularly financial advice and focus, is "sacrifice, go all in on work, work, work, save and invest through your 20s and 30s, which is the best decades of your life for compound growth! so you can have an absolutely amazing retirement, with enough money to do everything you want, and not worry about money, because there won't be social security!"
This feeds into a wider toxic focus of positioning work as "the thing that exists in opposition to the life we deserve to live." In reality, work is part of life. Retirement is actually the thing that exists in opposition to life.
The vision that's being sold is "if you sacrifice all fun and socialising, and just grind through your 20s and 30s, you'll get to have this wonderful, rewarding retirement" - but the reality is, many of us will not be in good enough health by the time we reach our 60s or 70s to actually do much of anything. Many of us will be being relied on to support adult children to manage their "hustle and grind", meaning we don't have the ability to "do whatever we want" in retirement. Some of us won't even make it to our 70s. A minority of us won't make it to our 60s.
Even for people who do make it to their 80s and beyond, the majority will spend most of those final years sitting in care home armchairs, staring at the wall/TV, or waiting, in pain and anxiety, in the "independence" of their own home, for a carer to come and provide necessary assistance with basic living tasks.
This feeds into a wider toxic focus of positioning work as "the thing that exists in opposition to the life we deserve to live." In reality, work is part of life. Retirement is actually the thing that exists in opposition to life.
The vision that's being sold is "if you sacrifice all fun and socialising, and just grind through your 20s and 30s, you'll get to have this wonderful, rewarding retirement" - but the reality is, many of us will not be in good enough health by the time we reach our 60s or 70s to actually do much of anything. Many of us will be being relied on to support adult children to manage their "hustle and grind", meaning we don't have the ability to "do whatever we want" in retirement. Some of us won't even make it to our 70s. A minority of us won't make it to our 60s.
Even for people who do make it to their 80s and beyond, the majority will spend most of those final years sitting in care home armchairs, staring at the wall/TV, or waiting, in pain and anxiety, in the "independence" of their own home, for a carer to come and provide necessary assistance with basic living tasks.
Is that really worth a monastic life of sacrifice and grind for the first two decades of your adult life?
Realistically, and being brutally and unconventionally honest - probably not.
Work is part of life.
It is not in competition with life.
It is not "preventing you" from living your life.
It is not "something we literally invented, and shouldn't have to do at all!"
Work is a normal part of a healthy, balanced life.
It's why high-impact disability typically comes with significant mental health impacts as well; work becomes something which has to be let go, and that unbalances our experience of life.
Honouring work responsibly means recognising that it will have a different priority and allocation of resources as we age through life.
It means committing your focus to work that can transition with you through life. (We'll look at that more in a moment.)
It means being proactive about identifying work that fulfils you. Not necessarily that you "love" (love is an extreme, and unsustainable as a long-term focus for anything that is not sentient, and therefore cannot engage in a positive feedback loop to renew and refresh you), but whose purpose matches with your own sense of what offers "meaning and value", and where you feel you are achieving something.
It means being focused on, and boundaried with, your time.
Honouring work responsibly: the breakdown.
20s-30s: Your split for work/rest/socialising should be 50/30/20 across a week:
. For 84hrs a week (12hrs per day) you work, and strategise around work
. For 30hrs a week (7hrs per day) you rest - this should be deep resting, ie, sleep.
. For 20hrs a week (4hrs per day) you invest in building and maintaining your social networks - friends, family, and work-related contacts.
.40-50s:Your focus recalibrates to 40/30/30 - 9hrs per day working/strategising around work, 7hrs per day resting (deep rest), and 7hrs per day building and maintaining social bonds (family and friends.)
.60s-70s: Recalibration to 30/30/40 - 7hrs per day working, 7hrs per day resting (deep resting), and 9hrs per day maintaining social bonds (family and friends.)
. 70s+ Recalibration to 20/50/30 - 4hrs per day working, 12hrs per day resting (split between deep rest - sleep, and "active rest" - calming, low-energy, low-impact, high-rejuvenation activities), and 7hrs per day investing in social bonds of friends and family.
The hours-commitments are rounded, so you'll end up with around 1hr of "unaccounted" time, which you can feel free to "waste" - if you "do nothing"? That's fine. If you allot it to an identified area of focus? That's cool, too. If you find something else to do with that roughly 1hr? Great.
How do I achieve this breakdown, though?!
Ideally, you'll be reading this before you've started having kids (or causing other people to have kids), and can therefore take an intelligent perspective on when to enter into relationships where activities which can potentially result in kids are prioritised.
That's the best-case, but, obviously, most of us come to advice at a point where certain life decisions which change the way we can focus have already been made.
In the "ideal 20s-30s", 4hrs is allocated to building social networks, including family. This means that, ideally, kids should only be entering the picture in your late 30s. However, ideal is irrelevant when life has already happened, so, if you're in your 20s-30s and already have kids?
. That 4hrs per day is per person - 2 people in their 20s-30s can commit 8hrs per day to family, which may be exclusively "kids-as-family" if kids are already involved.
. People in their 60s-70s have 9hrs per day allocated to social bonds - if those people are your social network, they may make 3hrs of those 9 available to supporting you with your children-as-family-focus.
. You may decide that your children are your work. That's perfectly acceptable, as long as there is a dependable income in the picture. (Social security/child benefits are not dependable. Reliance on older family members is not dependable. Reliance on a spouse or partner's income can be, as long as it is backed by both unemployment insurance and life insurance.) This route obviously gives you far more hours to focus on children (and/or dependently disabled family members.)
The lifelong connection with work also requires planning and deliberate focus - and there is no option to claim that you can't commit to that focus and planning. You are going to need to identify work roles which have a natural transition arc to gear down as you move through life.
I can create a detailed plan based on your unique personal circumstances for just £20; drop an email to theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com, but an overview of options and possibilities would look something like:
. Office work, medical professions, legal professions, and similar - transition arc leads into consultancy and support services.
. Hairdressing, beauty, fitness, etc - transition arc leads to design services, template plan creation, meal plan creation services, etc.
. Teaching - transition arc leads to private tutoring and learner-guided downloadable course creation.
. Cleaning - transition arc leads to books, podcasts, and product promotion.
. Manufacture - transition arc leads to design, tooling creation and online retail, and consultancy.
. Retail - transition arc leads to online, fully automated own business store fronts, visual merchandising roles (which are typically very part-time), and consultancy.
. Veterinary, carer, nurse, etc - transition arc leads to advice and guidance services.
Everyone should have fully liquid savings - but, the further through life you get, the fewer savings you realistically need. Potentially, replace 20% of your savings with better healthcare coverage for each decade-shift. While high-impact disability and health challenges can hit at any age, they are statistically more likely to occur in older age.
"Fully liquid" means you can access it immediately - literally, within 5minutes of your car failing, you can have the money to fix or replace it in your hand.
If you feel, or know, that you can't respect that liquid savings are for genuine emergencies, then consider a locked-in account; you may need to spend the notice period for the account being inconvenienced, or genuinely struggling, but you won't be able to impoverish yourself by draining your savings by considering travel, socialising, a new drop from your favourite brand, an "emergency."
Cars, health, property, and pets should all have insurance, so that, at worst, your savings will be reimbursed in the event of an emergency.
If investments genuinely interest you, and you fully understand them? Absolutely invest in whatever you want - with the understanding you may very well lose everything you front up.
The future isn't promised.
Most people won't have a future in which they're healthy enough to "live the life they want."
Work isn't the enemy.
Want to know more? Drop us an email: theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com
Realistically, and being brutally and unconventionally honest - probably not.
Work is part of life.
It is not in competition with life.
It is not "preventing you" from living your life.
It is not "something we literally invented, and shouldn't have to do at all!"
Work is a normal part of a healthy, balanced life.
It's why high-impact disability typically comes with significant mental health impacts as well; work becomes something which has to be let go, and that unbalances our experience of life.
Honouring work responsibly means recognising that it will have a different priority and allocation of resources as we age through life.
It means committing your focus to work that can transition with you through life. (We'll look at that more in a moment.)
It means being proactive about identifying work that fulfils you. Not necessarily that you "love" (love is an extreme, and unsustainable as a long-term focus for anything that is not sentient, and therefore cannot engage in a positive feedback loop to renew and refresh you), but whose purpose matches with your own sense of what offers "meaning and value", and where you feel you are achieving something.
It means being focused on, and boundaried with, your time.
Honouring work responsibly: the breakdown.
20s-30s: Your split for work/rest/socialising should be 50/30/20 across a week:
. For 84hrs a week (12hrs per day) you work, and strategise around work
. For 30hrs a week (7hrs per day) you rest - this should be deep resting, ie, sleep.
. For 20hrs a week (4hrs per day) you invest in building and maintaining your social networks - friends, family, and work-related contacts.
.40-50s:Your focus recalibrates to 40/30/30 - 9hrs per day working/strategising around work, 7hrs per day resting (deep rest), and 7hrs per day building and maintaining social bonds (family and friends.)
.60s-70s: Recalibration to 30/30/40 - 7hrs per day working, 7hrs per day resting (deep resting), and 9hrs per day maintaining social bonds (family and friends.)
. 70s+ Recalibration to 20/50/30 - 4hrs per day working, 12hrs per day resting (split between deep rest - sleep, and "active rest" - calming, low-energy, low-impact, high-rejuvenation activities), and 7hrs per day investing in social bonds of friends and family.
The hours-commitments are rounded, so you'll end up with around 1hr of "unaccounted" time, which you can feel free to "waste" - if you "do nothing"? That's fine. If you allot it to an identified area of focus? That's cool, too. If you find something else to do with that roughly 1hr? Great.
How do I achieve this breakdown, though?!
Ideally, you'll be reading this before you've started having kids (or causing other people to have kids), and can therefore take an intelligent perspective on when to enter into relationships where activities which can potentially result in kids are prioritised.
That's the best-case, but, obviously, most of us come to advice at a point where certain life decisions which change the way we can focus have already been made.
In the "ideal 20s-30s", 4hrs is allocated to building social networks, including family. This means that, ideally, kids should only be entering the picture in your late 30s. However, ideal is irrelevant when life has already happened, so, if you're in your 20s-30s and already have kids?
. That 4hrs per day is per person - 2 people in their 20s-30s can commit 8hrs per day to family, which may be exclusively "kids-as-family" if kids are already involved.
. People in their 60s-70s have 9hrs per day allocated to social bonds - if those people are your social network, they may make 3hrs of those 9 available to supporting you with your children-as-family-focus.
. You may decide that your children are your work. That's perfectly acceptable, as long as there is a dependable income in the picture. (Social security/child benefits are not dependable. Reliance on older family members is not dependable. Reliance on a spouse or partner's income can be, as long as it is backed by both unemployment insurance and life insurance.) This route obviously gives you far more hours to focus on children (and/or dependently disabled family members.)
The lifelong connection with work also requires planning and deliberate focus - and there is no option to claim that you can't commit to that focus and planning. You are going to need to identify work roles which have a natural transition arc to gear down as you move through life.
I can create a detailed plan based on your unique personal circumstances for just £20; drop an email to theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com, but an overview of options and possibilities would look something like:
. Office work, medical professions, legal professions, and similar - transition arc leads into consultancy and support services.
. Hairdressing, beauty, fitness, etc - transition arc leads to design services, template plan creation, meal plan creation services, etc.
. Teaching - transition arc leads to private tutoring and learner-guided downloadable course creation.
. Cleaning - transition arc leads to books, podcasts, and product promotion.
. Manufacture - transition arc leads to design, tooling creation and online retail, and consultancy.
. Retail - transition arc leads to online, fully automated own business store fronts, visual merchandising roles (which are typically very part-time), and consultancy.
. Veterinary, carer, nurse, etc - transition arc leads to advice and guidance services.
Everyone should have fully liquid savings - but, the further through life you get, the fewer savings you realistically need. Potentially, replace 20% of your savings with better healthcare coverage for each decade-shift. While high-impact disability and health challenges can hit at any age, they are statistically more likely to occur in older age.
"Fully liquid" means you can access it immediately - literally, within 5minutes of your car failing, you can have the money to fix or replace it in your hand.
If you feel, or know, that you can't respect that liquid savings are for genuine emergencies, then consider a locked-in account; you may need to spend the notice period for the account being inconvenienced, or genuinely struggling, but you won't be able to impoverish yourself by draining your savings by considering travel, socialising, a new drop from your favourite brand, an "emergency."
Cars, health, property, and pets should all have insurance, so that, at worst, your savings will be reimbursed in the event of an emergency.
If investments genuinely interest you, and you fully understand them? Absolutely invest in whatever you want - with the understanding you may very well lose everything you front up.
The future isn't promised.
Most people won't have a future in which they're healthy enough to "live the life they want."
Work isn't the enemy.
Want to know more? Drop us an email: theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com
Comments
Post a Comment