Our community is filled with hard-working, high achieving entrepreneurs and creatives and so work-life balance is a complicated, but highly relevant topic. We’ve shared some responses from the community about work life balance and how their views have evolved over time below.

Marina de Wit | Fine Art Floral Photographer

I work full time for an International Construction company and manage my Fine Art Photography on the side. Work life balance is super important to me and I personally struggled in the early days to stay on top of it all. Working a 40 hour week, busy family life, making time for photography, editing, admin, art sales, galleries and managing social media can be daunting to say the least and I would easily spend 8 hours working in the day and at least 4 at night to keep up with it all. This soon led to burn out and I had to really look closely how I managed my time and focus on the value add tasks. Read more>>

Alyssa Gonzalez | Athlete, Advocate and Designer

Up until recently I always looked at my work and life as very separate but once I started pursuing more advocacy work in the outdoors, the line between the two became blurred. I realize now that it’s almost impossible to keep work and my personal life separate but creating stronger boundaries for myself to differentiate specific time for each area has been really helpful for me. As a designer and advocate, I can do my work anytime, anywhere — which is a blessing and a curse. I have found that penciling in time in my calendar to go ride, hangout with friends, have some “me time”, etc. Read more>>

Jason Hopcus | Servant Leader, CEO, Innovator, Podcaster

Many entrepreneurs miss one key concept “Wherever you go, there you are.” Many solely focus on their business and often fail to recognize their own personal habits and routines can make a huge difference in the success of their businesses. Personally, I find work/life balance a journey of discovery. Taking time to reflect, renew, and refresh opens the door to explore new ideas, spark creativity, and push myself further to grow personally and professionally. Read more>>

James Harvey | Owner of Aspen Antlers

When it comes to work life balance it’s important not to lose sight of the goal at hand. As much as you want to go out and socialize or do this and do that. You have to miss out on those things in order to keep pushing yourself forward. I used to be all about work hard play hard until I played a little too hard and I lost focus of what I was doing. It’s important to have “you time” especially for productivity, just don’t get too comfortable. Read more>>

Paul Knaysi | Restaurant owner

For the first 12 years we were open, it was all work. I did get to spend time with my kids, but work was always present and I was always on call. We started to build our own house, and that’s when I was able to step away a bit. It was good for me and my employees to have me step back. They were able to participate more in decision making, and I was able to let go of the reins a bit and allow myself to trust them. After we finished the house, I picked up my work load, but it became clear that I was too busy with my kids’ lives to be totally effective at work. Read more>>