During the early years of launching our marketing agency, I worked all hours of the day. On a normal week I logged 80 hours, split between my full-time job at a publishing company, my part-time ministry as a children’s pastor, and launching the agency. We were also new parents, with a two-year-old and a newborn.
I did three things while awake – I worked, I spent time with my family, and I watched the occasional Braves game, usually with a sleeping child on my chest.
I eventually quit my job at the publishing company and pursued our agency full-time. A couple years later, I resigned from my church. After 5 years of overworking, we started to find some margin.
Kim continued to stay at home with our now 5-year-old, 3-year-old, and 1-year-old sons and I brought less and less work home.
Work Life, Home Life, & The Overlap
I have struggled to find the right balance of work life and home life. My business partner and I grew our agency exclusively from our homes for the first three years, then we got an office but I brought work home for years after, and in 2020, I returned home for 6+ months during COVID. There has always been an overlap between my home life and my work life, despite my deepest desire to be present for my family when I walk in the door at the end of the day.
I suppose that’s the story of most small business owners and entrepreneurs.
While I don’t bring home actual work as often these days, I do bring home the heaviness of decisions, the frustration of a stressful day, and the anticipation of tomorrow’s decisions.
But I also try and bring home the joys from work – new hires, team promotions, conversations with team members, a successful client campaign, and the anticipation of new goals.
I’m not sure I’ll ever find the perfect balance. I will always bring home the emotions of work – the burdens, the joys, and the heartbreak. However, I’ve learned something over the years: it’s important to share the emotions of my work with my wife and sons.
Here’s what I’ve learned while opening up to my family:
- My wife is skilled at helping me process anxiety and fear of failure and she desires to walk alongside me, pray for me, and encourage me
- My sons need to see me communicate with my wife about all areas of life and to see that we are partners in everything
- My sons need to know the work and the sacrifice required to grow and sustain a business and what pays for the things we enjoy
- My sons need to hear me share work-related prayer requests with them in our nightly prayer time. It proves that work was created by God and we should honor it with our best efforts.
What Works at Work Might Work at Home
In my work-life journey of finding balance, I’ve gone from bringing loads of actual work home, to learning to bring home the emotions of work, to now looking to bring some of the structure we’ve created at work into my home.
In 2020, our company implemented a business operating system called Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS.
EOS is incredibly structured and helps us track our goals and keep all our teams aligned. In a recent quarterly planning session, a team member said he was using EOS’s quarterly goal setting tool to help him accomplish a home project. I loved this application of the tool, and I started thinking about our work culture and structure and how those same tools could be helpful for me as a leader of our home.
I identified five EOS tools to bring home.
Meeting Rhythms
At work, each department has a weekly meeting and a quarterly conversation with their senior.
At home, I want to establish a weekly 1-on-1 with each of my sons. It could be breakfast at Waffle House, a walk on local trails, playing video games, throwing the baseball, or shooting basketball. I’ve learned that asking my son how his day was while at the dinner table nets 5 words, but asking that same question while throwing a baseball nets 500 words. I want the same 1-on-1 time with my wife. It might not be a dinner date each week, but it can be intentional, engaged time without screens.
Quarterly Events
At work, we have 5 large events each year – Office Olympics, July Pool Party, Halloween Costume Contest & Party, Thanksgiving Turkpot, and Christmas Party.
At home, I want to make sure we are getting away from our city and spending family time with less distractions. We only have three summers remaining before my oldest son goes off to college and I want to make the most of those. We go away each year to the mountains and to the beach, but I want to get more creative with our trips and create new experiences for our sons. This year, my oldest and I went to Guatemala with our church. It was life-altering in many ways. I want to be open to creating more unique experiences.
Acknowledge Wins & Demonstrated Values
At work, we have a monthly meeting, and we recognize team members for demonstrating one of our company’s core values.
At home, I want to establish our family’s core values and recognize when someone demonstrates a value. We should always reinforce the behaviors we want to see in others and acknowledge when they succeed.
Set Quarterly Goals
At work, we have quarterly goals; we call them rocks. They are the most important things for us to accomplish each quarter. Each team member has anywhere from 1-8 rocks each quarter.
At home, I’d like for my family to set their own quarterly goals and to build out a plan to accomplish them. Maybe it’s learning a new card trick, handwriting letters to 10 friends, logging 20 hours on Duolingo, reading 4 books, painting a room, completing a yard project, or taking 5,000 swings in the batting cage.
Yearly Letter
At work, I write a letter each year to our team that recaps our wins, lessons learned, and highlights. It also casts vision for next year.
At home, I want to do the same. It’s so easy to forget all that we accomplished and experienced in a year when life moves so quickly, and it would be such a joy to have a collection of these to read.
I admit this is all a bit formal and can seem forced, but I’ve learned that I have to be proactive and intentional with my time. Otherwise, I’ll waste time scrolling Instagram reels, watching episodes of The Office I’ve seen a hundred times, or sitting in the same room with someone and not actually being together.
I also admit I’m a little late in starting some of these. My sons are 12, 14, and 16 and Kim and I have been married for 20 years. But, as the saying goes, “the best time to start was yesterday and the next best time is now.”
So, I’m going to get started. Anyone with me?
Commit to Bring More Work Home for Three Months
I am committing to bringing more work home over the next 3 months. I will bring home more of the challenges and wins and share those with my family over dinner and during prayer time. I will bring home some of the tools that have helped us grow our agency and allow them to grow the intimacy of our family.
I am thankful to be in a place where I’m bringing less actual work home, and I can instead bring home the tools and principles.
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