Time is rationed out to us all at the same rate: 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. But it isn’t enough. One moderately successful way around this is to hire someone else’s time, and though this costs money it frees up one’s own time a little to cram a bit more activity into our daily schedule; but even still, does anyone EVER get everything they need to get done, done? And what about this divine yet elusive idea of the “work/life balance”?
I don’t have a dog. I don’t have any pets for that matter and if I did I am quite sure they would perish from loneliness and neglect. I am 26, married and blessed with a beautiful and bubbly 2 year old daughter. I have good friendships and a lot of close family which my wife and I make sure are given as much of their due attention as possible. On top of this I run my Garden Design and Landscaping business.
“And…?” I hear you ask.
Well these are not problems in themselves of course; in fact I quite enjoy these different elements of my life – but where’s the Nicky time?
Apparently how one's life should be
I take Mondays in the office; I spend as much of that time as possible working through my designs, working on prices and drafting quotations. Tuesday to Friday are on site 10 hours; Saturdays are spent surveying and pricing and Sundays are “Peep” time – that is time to indulge my family and friends with my insatiably pleasurable company.
This all seems very straight forward; but then add to it the daily (and I mean daily) drudge through mail and email correspondence; phone-calls with staff, clients and suppliers and those fecking marketing people; paying house bills and business bills and tracking project costs; studying books and searching for inspiration for designs in them and online; the endless media digest and those cursed RSS feeds; the forums; the online advertising campaigns; the banking; the employees; the tax changes; social networking and updating profiles and status (Nicky is …ranting); the HSE changes and other legal stuff; following the financial news to see if we’re all falling into the black-hole or not…it is endless and often gruelling. Sometimes I feel guilty stealing 10 minutes in the toilet to read the sports pages – why is this?
On top of all this we are told we should be making time to be green as well!
I’m all for the planet but the world is mental!
The circus of life
When do I play my guitar, start that political party, go for a run, play football, read a book that isn’t about gardens or business, walk the dead dog, watch a film, buy flowers for my wife, or even better cook her dinner?!
So here I suppose is the rub: I am not yet a large enough enterprise with enough guaranteed work in-front of me to be able to hire full time staff to deal with all this administration; yet it is far too much for me to cope with alone. More than that I have a strong urge to have an intimate degree of control over all of this anyway since I am ultimately accountable at the end of it. I wonder; are there any designers or landscapers out there who do have time to watch football, or go to the pub, or go shopping, or take the dead dog for a walk?
Perhaps I am cursed by my own autocracy, not able or willing to delegate. Perhaps cursed by my own imagination which only permits me to read words as fast as I can speak them – so as to savour and value the true meaning (at least that’s what I tell myself). My daily digest of information and opinion is amassed with vital, up-to-the-minute and informative knowledge and fact which allows me, as the businessman, and as the designer, as a landscaper, and as the canny bill-payer, to both function and operate. It’s magnitude, however, is at the same time infinitely resourceful and exhaustingly overwhelming. Similarly it is both the source of motivation and the cause of demotivation.
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Perhaps I’m not cursed at all, perhaps this is just what needs to be done in today’s globalised Nicky Patterson world where work and life are much the same thing.
Then again Capability Brown did okay back then without his mobile phone, laptop and the personal invasion of the internet. He surely had a decent work/life balance. Would that still be true if he were here today?
Nicky, Nicky, Nicky.
I am sure you have heard the saying “All work and no play…”.
Don’t worry about that “special” time in the bathroom with the sports page, or the times you play guitar. You need some ME time my friend to have that happy and balanced life that wheel shows.
Oh, what the hell am I talking about! I work 40 to 60 hours a week, and hate to see the weekends come because I am so burned out I despise working around the house. Then when Monday rolls around, I kick myself in the ass because I didn’t accomplish anything over the weekend.
You are not alone my friend.
My advice: Spend as much time with the daughter as possible. She will be graduated and married before you know it…ask me, my son somehow has turned 21. Luckily, I spent as much time as possible with him, and he is a great young man because of it.
Hang in there!
Hi from California. I’m not a pro at this either, but I suggest you get to know chris_heiler @ Twitter. He’s a designer and new dad and seems organized by nature.
Thanks v much for the contact Jeannie – As it happens I’m already connected with Chris through a number of networks, and yes he certainly is a helpful guy to know!!
Cheers!