Appreciating My Job and Work-Life Balance
Like most everybody else with a job, I may not love every minute I’m at work. However, I like where we live and I’m happy with our lifestyle. We’re still quite a ways from Financial Independence, so we are still reliant on money to continue to live the way we do.
Rather than focus on reasons I want to someday stop working, from time to time I like to consider what I enjoy about spending many of my waking hours at my job. It helps me appreciate what I have and knowing that I’m actually doing just great, all things considered.
So here are some perks of my current job, at this point in time.
Teaching
I like to teach others about what I’ve learned over my career, and as long as my perspective and insight is helpful to others, it makes me happy to share. I enjoy watching people be successful, efficient, and become more knowledgeable.
Thankfully, through my job I’m encouraged to share knowledge, opinions, and ideas with my colleagues. Not only that, but my opinion matters, and I’m respected by my colleagues.
Learning
I enjoy expanding my knowledge in all aspects of my life, including my job.
I am constantly learning at work, and encouraged to continue. I have opportunities throughout the year to learn new technical skills that help me become more productive and prepare for new technology. These happen through conferences, trainings, and documentation, all helpful to my job.
I’m also given opportunities to learn soft skills, which I’ve been able to apply to my job and my personal life. Understanding and practicing different communication styles has helped a lot.
Recently I was able to attend training on teaching, mentoring, and coaching. It was obvious to me how this will be applicable toward work and home, and I’ve already started to use these techniques in different aspects of my life.
41 hours
In an average work week that I’m not taking any vacation, I spend about 41 hours combined working and commuting. 40 hours working, and 1 hour commuting. Not too bad.
Something else that I’ve noticed is that I don’t spend very much time outside of work thinking about my job. Yes, I’ll have the occasional big presentation I’ll walk through in my head during off hours, but in general I try not to let my job bring much stress into my life. I fall asleep fairly easily every night.
Great Co-workers
The people on my team are all genuinely nice and thoughtful people. They care about what they’re doing and want to make a difference. Even though they could all make more money in the private sector, they all seem to be happy to work for a local government.
We all get along and are happy to bounce ideas off of each other when we aren’t sure about something. Although we tend not to get together outside of work, we all chat a little bit about our personal lives too.
I feel very fortunate to work with my colleagues.
Lots To Do
I’m always busy. There isn’t ever a lack of tasks to do, and there’s never time to be bored. It is required that we stick to 8 hour days, but as a consequence time and task management are crucial.
This is a good thing. I like to have a variety of projects and tasks to occupy my time. I rarely feel the day dragging on, and I usually feel like I was productive at the end of the day.
Encouraged time off
I’ve worked at my current job for more than 10 years now, and I’m accruing more vacation time every couple years. Rather than prioritizing work over anything else, my supervisor makes sure to take vacation time, and encourages us to do the same.
I gear most of my vacation time to align with my wife’s and kids’ school breaks, and I can’t remember a recent time where a vacation request has been denied.
Benefits – Health and Pension
My family has had years with high health costs and others with very low costs. Thankfully I get good health coverage that covers my family and doesn’t take too much out of my paycheck.
Another benefit I receive is a pension based on the number of years I’ve worked and my salary. If I continue to enjoy my current job or work for another state sponsored government agency, this pension will continue to grow. Having this extra income starting in my mid 60s will be an important factor in calculating my retirement numbers.
Work-life balance
I focus while I’m at work. I also don’t think too much about my job outside of work hours. With my kids in school and my wife in education, we all spend the school year with very similar schedules. I start work shortly before the kids get up and get off work just as they’re finishing up their homework. I wake up a little earlier than my kids and go to sleep slightly later than them most every day of the week.
This works out great. I’m able to spend time with them on weekends and after school activities, and I don’t have work-related commitments that force me to leave my family on a regular basis. There are one or two work conferences that I sometimes have an opportunity to attend for 2-5 days, which can involve travel. This is good for my professional career, but it is tough to leave my family.
I’m Pretty Fortunate
While many people I know are not happy with their jobs, when I really look at my circumstances, I’m doing great. It’s true that I didn’t go for a high stress, high paying job. Because of that I still have quite a lot of savings and investing to do, but at least for now I’m pretty happy with my 8 to 5.
I do realize that my situation could change at any point in time, so I try not to take what I have for granted. I plan to work hard to make sure my work-life balance doesn’t go out of whack.
Thankfully, because we’re saving and investing the way we are, if changes to my job do cause me stress and unhappiness, I have the ability to look elsewhere for work, or take some time off to recalibrate.
Reader Questions
- Have you had a job that worked out well for your work-life balance?
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