24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. Junior investment bankers regularly work 80-90 hours a week. Many other high profile professions require the same level of commitment. Often those on the outside claim that working 80-90 hours a week is bad/wrong/terrible/silly/etc but we’ve spoken with so many folks who say working that much has been the best decision of their life – it allowed them to develop a deep and strong skill set far faster than would have been possible otherwise. In other words, by working 2x the hours, they were able to generate 5x or more the rewards. And depending on where you are in your career, investing heavily in your skills and competence can pay dividends for a long time.

Saloni Doshi | CEO, EcoEnclose

I am a mom of three young kid and run EcoEnclose with my husband and it is incredibly easy to lose any sense of balance. I used to think about EcoEnclose while I was with my kids and talk constantly about the business with my husband over the weekends. While I can’t build a life where work fits neatly into the day and doesn’t bleed into my nights and weekends, I have found better balance over time. Specifically, I’ve found there are two steps I need to take. The first is effective planning. At the beginning of every week, I set clear priorities for myself and a plan for each day. This includes everything from critical EcoEnclose priorities to the activities I plan to do with the kids after school. It sounds like a small thing, but this level of planning enables me to be better at the second step of achieving balance. Read more>>

Susan Troy | Macaroni Kid Publisher & Travel Agent

There is no balance honestly, or maybe it’s balance over weeks and month, not on a daily basis. Some days I spend more time working and less in my life, and other days I spend more in my life with less work. As an entrepreneur it’s easy to let your business run your life. To achieve long term balance I have to use a lot of organization and focus on my most important goals, both personally and professionally. I have to make the choice every day to not let my business take over my life. Read more>>

Jill Simonds | Business Leader & Entrepreneur

Balance has and always will be evolving and a constant priority for me. Balance also means varying things to different people and there are many views on what it actually takes to maintain a healthy work and life. What it comes down to for me is prioritizing and making time for what matters, and serving the relationships in my life first. I think of it as fundraising for life – to serve and provide for what we enjoy doing together most as a family. Success and joy from work to me is not about working harder or more hours.. it’s about working smart. Over time, I’ve learned I do not have to work to misery or burnout to be successful. I also choose work based on what I’m most passionate about – if I’m working toward something I’m passionate about, I’m fulfilled by that work. Working for something we’re not passionate about causes unhappiness and unnecessary stress. Read more>>

Scott Ausdemore | Founder, Adventurable

This is an important question to me and actually another reason I started Adventurable. In these hectic times a lot of people just work, work, work, work, work. I feel like it has never been more important to find a healthy work life balance. With many start-ups throwing around the word “hustle”, and judging employees for not working far beyond reasonable hours, I fear work-life balance has become increasingly rare. It is important to remember your job doesn’t define you. You define you, and your career is just a small part of that. Spend time with your family, and spend time doing things you love. Find new things you are interested in and dive in head first! You won’t regret it. Life is too short to spend time worrying about your job. Read more>>

Gina Fabré | Aesthetician/Lash Specialist

It took me a little bit of time to find balance within running my business, being a mom and wife, and still staying true to myself without losing myself. Initially I was so about starting my business that I put all my time, energy and focus into Blink and my home life was negatively impacted. And then, I took a step back and focused more on family and my business suffered. I’m finally at a stage where I feel like I’ve got a decent balance between them. I had to actually sit down with my husband and map out what a good balance looked like from his perspective and my perspective to see outside of myself. I’m fortunate to have the love and support of my family because sometimes it’s hard to keep that balance at times. Read more>>

Tiffany Helton | Restaurant Owner & Restaurant Coach

Work life balance is coveted by the entrepreneur. When I was first starting out in my career, work life balance did not exist. Nor did I need it to. I didn’t have a family and truth of the matter is, I enjoy working. As soon as I had a family everything changed. Children don’t care about restaurant emergencies. They need their parents to be home. Thankfully my husband’s schedule is flexible and we have an army of people helping us including my wonderful staff. I will tell you though, after 11 years of owning restaurants work life balance is still a struggle. Read more>>

Adir Saati | Movement Coach

We believe everything has a balance. If we exercise too much, we could get hurt. If we eat too many of one healthy food, we could get sick, etc…The Longevity Training motto is ‘Move to Live, Live to Move”. I started this program to help people ( mainly older people) increase the amount of active years in our lifetime, because thats what life is all about. Being active, playing sports, walking…. its the balance of life. That being said, I stick to a pretty consistent active schedule. I enjoy sports like, rock climbing, hiking, camping, standup paddle boarding, disc golf, biking, golf, pickle ball, basketball, and most of all, I try and snowboard about 50 days a year on the mountain. Yes, I know thats ALOT, ha, what can I say? I love to move and play! have always worked hard to continue the growth of my business, and of course struggle every once in awhile with the “work/life balance”. When I first started Longevity Training, I listened to lots of “Entrepreneur Guru’s” talking about, working 14 hour days, making sacrifices by giving up relationships/commitments that dont bring you closer to have reach your ‘dream”. Read more>>

B.J. Nolletti | Business Owner / Technology Developer / Hula Hooper

If any entrepreneur out there has the work life balance thing completely figured out, please let me know the secret. As far as I can tell, this is something that requires regular attention. I have to keep reminding myself that no matter how many hours I work, or how many cups of coffee I drink, I will never reach a point when I say to myself, “Oh look, I’m caught up on everything!” Because of this, time management skills become very important. I manage my time as wisely as I can and make daily lists of work tasks to be accomplished. And if I start catching myself not taking enough time for me, I’ll start writing things on those lists like, “eat lunch”, “go home by 6:00”, “go on a bike ride”. Boundaries are also very important. There’s times that I work, and there’s times that I try really hard to think about, talk about, and do anything other than work. On my phone, work email notifications are always off. I check emails intentionally, when I have the time and the headspace to answer them properly, and my personal time is never interrupted by them. Read more>>

Kendra Visioli | NE Denver Photographer

I’m not sure work/life balance is ever something we feel truly stable in, especially in the creative industry. Life is constantly shifting, and creative work is generally not consistent either. In any sphere, we are making choices about where the majority of focus lies. Some days the focus goes more towards work, while other days the focus is more fully on life. And honestly, that is one of the reasons I chose to pursue this career! Being able to have seasons of putting my full attention on raising my family is a gift. Having the capacity to put energy into a work project helps me to feel refueled and productive so that I can go back and serve my family better. Read more>>

Amy Dannwolf | Owner of Powder7

Healthy work/life balance is vital to longterm success because it’s essential to a person’s well-being. I have a really hard time pulling away from any work in progress, which is what most things are when you’re an entrepreneur or involved in any creative pursuit. Having kids has helped me with the balance, because I need to pull away and focus on them – I need the hard cut-off of school pick-up or being home in time to relieve a sitter. However, the challenge has then become dedicating time to myself: filling my personal bucket. I view my contributions as a mother as work as well, it’s a job I take really seriously and I’m proud to have, and while I am fortunate to enjoy the work I do for Powder7 and the work I do as a mom, I also need to make time for me. Over the past year, my priorities were in flux constantly – the scales of work and parenthood always swaying. At first, I neglected myself. I didn’t force myself to make time for any of my own hobbies, but once I realized that was untenable in the medium to longterm, I tried hard to prioritize myself and it really paid off. Read more>>

Katrina Nguyen | Denver Realtor

I used to have the “work hard, play hard” mentality and believed that the only way for me to be successful and happy to throw myself into work. But I’ve learned over years that working 60 to 80 hours a week – isn’t living – it’s slavery. I wanted to be a successful real estate agent so bad that I did everything I can to succeed but I struggled with high levels of stress, anxiety and depression. I knew that if I kept going at the rate I was going, I was going to die early. So I took a step back to really focus on my health – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I realized that having success isn’t about having the most money. It’s about have the most balance. It’s about being able to balance work, health, family and friends, community, and anything else that matters. My days usually start off with gratitudes, affirmations, meditation, and a work out to remind myself that I matter. In addition, I’ve also developed a high level of empathy towards myself. Read more>>

Mark Crawford | Film Composer, Most Recent Film | The Social Dilemma

I definitely thing my work life balance has shifted quite a bit since my 20’s. As soon as I graduated from college, I felt like I tried to run a million miles an hour, work through the weekends, say “yes” to every project that came my way. I don’t regret that time because I got an incredible amount of practice and experiences by drinking from the firehose, and I also discovered not only all the passions I was drawn to, but all the areas where I did not want to excel. At one point, when I felt like I was at my stress level peak, I wrote the four things I wanted more of in my work life down on four sticky notes, and I put these on the bottom of my computer screen. Every opportunity that came in, I’d check against my four sticky notes to see how many boxes they’d check. It became easier to say “no” to certain projects and “yes” to others, taking a lot of the emotional stress of turning down life opportunities out of the equation. Looking back, I can see how just those four simple sticky notes tangibly changed the course of my life. Read more>>

Kirsten DiCaprio | Brand Strategist + Web Designer

Finding work life balance is definitely something that I’m still working on. I think a lot of entrepreneurs have trouble finding their off switch. It feels like there’s always one more email to send or one last thing to check off on your to-do list. But I think it’s so important to take time to disconnect from your work. Even though I love what I do, I don’t want to be always working. I’ll do little things like turn off email notifications after a certain time, or delete social media apps over the weekend to “force” myself away for a bit. On a bigger level setting client expectations about communication and scope of work right off the bat help keep scope creep in check and keep my work load manageable. Read more>>

Anita Mumm | Book Editor & Ghostwriter

This has always been one of my biggest challenges of being self-employed. When do shut down for the day? How do you build vacation time into a schedule that is flexible but tends to always fill up with one more work project? I think of my work as a vocation rather than a job, but that doesn’t mean I have to be “on” 24/7. Over the years, I’ve learned the hard way that you have to set personal boundaries or burnout will start to creep in. I do this by building fun activities into my schedule: for example, an “adult play date” with close friends on the same day/time every week. Friends can help keep you accountable. Or, I’ll plan a fun weekend outing and force myself to leave the laptop behind. Finding the right work/life balance is a tough process and different for every individual, but it is crucial to both happiness and success. I think of it as a work in progress–kind of like life in general!. Read more>>

Sheri Colosimo | Leadership + Business Coach

Night and day difference from the start of my career. I used to push through my work. That style had a lot of rewards for me as I naturally like to take action and was able to produce a lot of results for myself and others. Over the past few years, I have felt a strong desire to re-examine why I work. A lot of answers that I found related to wanting to prove my worth. Now, I am learning how to believe in myself more and find more flow in my life. That looks like giving myself permission to fully take care of myself during the “work week.” I create my days around all parts of my life that I love: my work, movement, being outdoors, time with friends, rest, learning. I find more fulfillment when I prioritize my whole self vs. just a piece of who I am. Read more>>

Carrie Thrall | Burnout Prevention and Stress Management Life Coach

I strive on a daily basis to achieve that ideal “balance” of work responsibilities, roles and tasks with life responsibilities, roles and tasks. I work with clients on this as well given my business is focused on coaching to prevent burnout or overwhelm from stress. This concept of “balance” though, is a tricky one since we truly can not achieve that ideal balance. What I have learned and work with my clients around is that rather than striving for balance, look to become a master at prioritization and shifting focus to the priority in the present moment. Truly, trading off between priorities is how we achieve great things both at work and at home. If I am focused on my present priority of family time, I am not distracted by the work tasks in my office or that meeting that I need to schedule. If I am focused on my work, I am not thinking about the dinner I need to prep or the laundry that needs to be finished. The mastery here is focusing on one thing at a time, without distraction, and keeping track of when you get diverted from the task at hand. Read more>>

Eileen Kantor | Master Stylist & Salon Owner

Part of my sanity has been in setting a schedule for work and home. I have administration days,client days and most importantly, personal days. Sunday is a day for resetting and recharging. It is not a day for business. Quarantine brought us all many lessons. For me, the first was the importance of family and spending quality time together every day. In addition to family dinners, I make it a priority to eat breakfast with my boys. It is my hope that we keep these new routines as the world starts to open back up. Read more>>

Rachel Cohen | President and Bridge Builder

I struggled for years to understand what it meant to have balance. I’d work really hard, put in 50-60 hour weeks, say yes to every request and constantly strive to prove myself and then I’d realize how much time I was spending in front of a screen rather than outdoors with friends and I’d swing my attention heavily in the other direction. It never felt like balance, more like a fast moving seesaw. Balance is elusive and for me is more about honoring myself as much as my clients. If I don’t fill my own cup, I can’t be fully present. It is also acknowledging that it is less about balance and more about flow. For me this means paying attention to what fills me up: hiking, creating a homestead with my husband and growing/raising nutritious food for my family and sharing the surplus with others like the dozens of duck eggs we donate to our local food pantry, snuggling my dogs, traveling the world and volunteering. I live my mission of making the world a better place through my volunteering as a Board member for Kavod Senior Life, a senior housing provider, and with Staunton State Park Track Chair program where we take people with mobility challenges hiking using motorized wheelchairs. Read more>>

Eliza Steinberg | Attorney

Mastering the perfect work-life balance is like capturing a unicorn-it is impossible! The work life balance for me is constantly evolving because my priorities are constantly evolving. When you cannot prioritize what you want to prioritize, your work life balance needs adjusting. Balance can be achieved when you are consciously allocating your time. For me, I spend a lot of time at work, but when my work is complete, I can relax and be more mentally present in my non-work life. For me, that is balance even when my standard work hours consume much more than the typical 40 hour work week. I first started to think about work-life balance when I was working full time and attending law school in the evenings. I felt that I had no time for myself, my friends or my family. Most people would agree that I didn’t and that it was actually impossible to find that time among the demands of work and school. After the first year of law school, I started the rule that I would take off one day a week where I would not do work or school. Read more>>

Laurel Burlew | Photographer

I think our work life balance will constantly change throughout our lives. My balance was different before 2020, when I had a larger capacity and was able to take on more in work and in my outside life. I always try to embrace any needed changes to ensure my life is as balanced and healthy as it can be. Because of this, I am constantly examining the current balance in my life and am open to adjusting it whenever I need. Read more>>