Work less hard, you won’t regret it

Do you feel like you work too hard? Spend too many hours in the office or commuting? You’re not alone.

People on their deathbeds wish they hadn’t worked so hard. It’s a cliché isn’t it? I certainly find myself often saying or thinking: “No one says on their deathbed that they wished they had spent more time in the office.”

I would guess that almost everyone trying to achieve Financial Independence is, in part, doing it because they want not to work so hard. Actually that’s not quite true. Very few of us who want to become financially independent say we want to do nothing. When I look at the financially independent, many people find that they are busier and working harder than they ever did as an employee. That may be looking after their family, volunteering, travelling, pursuing hobbies, developing passion project or even doing paid work. The difference is about filling those days by choice rather than necessity.

The regret that people feel is not about having spent their lives being busy, it is about having spent their lives being busy working to make money and missing out on what matters in their lives. It’s about working long hours, evenings and weekends and not doing the things that they really care about.

This is the second in my series about living life with no regrets. The first one was about having the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of them. This one is about not regretting on your deathbed that you worked too hard. And, to give you a little tease, I have a list of specific, actionable, tips at the end of how I’ve managed to work less hard.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

We were walking down Bond Street side by side on a surprisingly pleasant spring day. The rain that had been plaguing us for the last few weeks had finally stopped. As a result, even though we were dodging puddles, we decided to walk back to the office.

My companion was in an ebullient mood. The bankers loved the proposal and all that stood in the way of the Royal Opera House was a long lunch. Just past 60 with silver hair, tailored suits and a belly that spoke to the many Michelin Stars that he had vanquished, he looked very much like the successful FTSE 100 Chairman that he was.

Today’s story was about his big break. The time that he had been appointed to his first S&P 500 CEO role.

He was a raconteur and I laughed out loud as he told of how he had arrived back at Heathrow to see his secretary waiting for him at the departure gate. She clutched the tickets for the next flight back to the East Coast. He had the job but had to turn around at Heathrow to fly straight back to meet the chairman.

“…the awful thing was that I was coming back for my son’s 15^th birthday party. There was a whole party that my wife had organised. I had to call her from the lounge to tell her I couldn’t make it.  I could see the look on her face from the other end of the phoneline.”

“It was worth it though. Right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Missing your son’s birthday. I mean you had got the CEO job. That doesn’t happen every day.”

He paused and didn’t looked at me as we carried on past the windows full of watches and earrings and necklaces encrusted with diamonds. Then he replied.

“No. No it wasn’t”

He changed the subject and we walked on.

The downside of working too hard

I think that is the core of what people mean when they talk about regretting working so hard. It comes down to missing things. Being in the office while they paid someone to bring up their children, missing that wedding or, like my client, that birthday because they were on a work trip.

For me it feels like work can be even more pernicious than that. Work can suck my energy even when I’m not there. After a long day at work I come home tired and distracted. My children jump up and are all excited to tell me about their day but I just won’t be properly present. I’ll want to engage with them but I find my mind drifting to whether I just need to send that email or who I’ll need to catch first thing in the office. My fingers twitch for my phone. That’s no way to be.

The time I spend at work spills over into other aspects of my life as well. When I’m working too hard I don’t exercise enough and I’m likely to eat less healthily. I can already see that I have sacrificed my most vigorous years to sitting in an office. While I can’t get those years back, I can certainly do something about the future.

The need to work hard

I have a love/hate relationship with working hard. One of the most critical factors that led to success in my career are the periods of time when I had to work really hard. By really hard I mean 12-hour days and most of the weekend hard. The leaving to get a flight on Sunday afternoon and not getting back home until midnight Friday hard. The ‘having worked all weekend and sending the last emails at 2 am on Monday night for the 8 am meeting a few hours later’ hard.

To be clear I’m not suggesting that is what everyone need to do. I’m not even suggesting that they’re necessary for everyone. However, those bursts, and importantly the outcomes they delivered, were what put me on the map. They were what I pointed to when I was making my case for a promotion. They are the things that senior colleagues remember when they think about me. And it worked. In my particular circumstances I wouldn’t have the job I have today if I hadn’t stepped up when those times came along. It was me recognising, and taking, my opportunities when they came along

The thing is, those are also the times that made me realise that I needed to find a better way to live my life.

There are people that spend their entire careers working like that, sacrificing their today for what? For the promise of a better tomorrow? For too many people when ‘tomorrow’ finally arrives they look around at the scorched earth that they have created. The fractured relationships, the broken health, the lack of hobbies. Instead they see the house, the car, even the pension and savings in the bank. The question they, and we, need to answer is: “Was it worth it?”

“No, no it wasn’t”

For me that trade off doesn’t work. I enjoy my job but there are other things that I want to do with my days. I enjoy interacting with my colleagues but they aren’t my family and very few of them are my friends. My life isn’t my work my life is everything outside of that.

Sure there are things that I want to achieve professionally but, as I’ve said before I achieved everything at work that I wanted to. My remaining professional goals are minor and I’m very relaxed about the risk I may not achieve them. But even beyond that, when Iook into my personal goals it’s not missing out the big things that I worry about. I don’t think I will have regrets from that side. No, it’s the little things that I want to not lose out on. The books I will leave unread, the films unwatched, the music unheard. It’s the desire to ride a bike again, to learn to swim breast stroke, to learn more languages.

But above all. What I’m not sanguine about it the thought that I may miss my children growing up, that’s my biggest fear.

While I have been at work they have turned from toddlers into children and are heading toward young adulthood. Even though I have years more before they leave home I am, bizarrely missing them already. I replay my conversation with that Chairman a lot. He had won the material prizes that were on offer but had missed out on his family growing up.

How to stop working so hard

This is all very well, but the challenge that many of you will have is on how to do this. How can we all stop working so hard? We all would love to work less but how do you go about it?

Here are six things that I do to keep myself from the regret of having worked too hard.

1) Ruthlessly prioritise

The first and most important thing that I do is to ruthlessly prioritise. What I have found is that there are very few things that actually matter either to my career or to my company. The few things that matter are really quite important and take time and effort so that’s what I spend the majority of my time working on.

The rest is noise so I either drop them or put in the minimum effort to tick it off the list. It’s amazing how much more manageable my life has become after doing that.

The side effect of prioritising is that it has been extremely good for my career. By doing the things that matter properly I’ve developed a reputation for competence…while working less. Win-win.

2) Work hard when you’re at work

The second point is related to prioritisation and it’s to actually work hard when I’m in the office. I’m not suggesting that I never have a chat to my colleagues or talk a moment to look out of the window. But, my general philosophy is that when I’m at work I should just crack on. If nothing else that’s what I’m being paid to do

While I have talked about the importance of idleness before it’s important to distinguish that from laziness. It’s also important to note that people’s regret that they hadn’t worked so hard tend to primarily be around long hours in the office, travel, working evenings and weekends etc. For most people it’s not that they had a challenging job.

So my view is that working hard when I’m at work if a good thing. Heck, I may as well. I’m there anyway so I may as well get the work done, and done well. The time passes faster and more enjoyably that way. Importantly it means that I can go home at the end of the day rather than having to stay on.

3) Leave at the same time every day.

I work my hours, but I don’t stay longer than those hours (I do confess that I check my emails at least once most evenings and over the weekend – although I don’t reply unless something genuinely can’t wait until the next morning). Walking out of the office at the same time helps me do that. I’m a sucker for routine and if I know that I am going to leave at a particular time to make a particular train it means that I structure my day to get my work done to allow that.

The idea that works expands to fill the available time is a cliché because it’s true. If I have an extra half hour to write that note then I’ll take an extra half hour to write it. It’s rare that it will make any material difference to the quality of that note, but it will definitely make a difference to the quality of my evening.

This is something that I found particularly hard at first. I started my career in a time and field where long hours in the office was the norm. I became conditioned to the idea that face time was good. Even when I changed jobs I’m nonplussed to I look back and remember that I would get a smug sense of superiority about being the last person in the office or the only person in on weekends.

Reconditioning myself took time and it was ultimately it took my becoming a parent for me to start to regularly leave at a reasonable hour.

4) Work from home

Once I started to leave at a reasonable time the next stage was to start to work from home. The benefits of not commuting and have breakfast with my children can’t be understated. It’s one of the best things that I have ever done. Again though, this is something that I again found very hard to do at first. In fact it took me a couple of years after I negotiated it into my contract to actually do it regularly.

This is where my financial independence journey has really helped me. Part of the reason that I was reluctant to work from home was the fear that if I wasn’t there then it would lead to problems. My best case scenario was that I would be overlooked for promotions or pay rises.  Worst case scenario? I would fired.

My financial independence stash allowed me to think: “Bring it on.” I knew that I was doing my job and doing it well. If my employer decided that I’m not doing enough then they could get rid of me and I’d go with my head held high. I had years of spending already saved up. I’d be fine.

Of course, that was all unnecessary bravado. My employer is very happy that I work from home and it’s had no impact on my career. As is the case so often, all of that fear was in in my head.

5) Take unpaid leave

When my children were born I took as much parental leave as I was allowed both paid and unpaid. I also took a sabbatical for a month or two when they were young but before they started school. The net result was that I was around for maybe four months in total of the first years of their life. It was amazing and a time that I will never regret.

After they started school though I feel like I lost my way for a few years. I certainly didn’t take any unpaid holiday, but there were even years when I didn’t take all of the annual leave that I was entitled to. That I do regret. It was a mistake and it’s time that I will never get back.

I have tried to rectify that in recent years. For the last few years I have taken three to four weeks of unpaid leave off every year. The main benefit has been that I’ve largely been at home when the kids are on holiday it also means that I have the breathing space to take a day off for things like sports day or nativity plays without feeling like I then have to trade off somewhere else.

Oh, the best bit, as I’m doing this as unpaid parental leave, in the UK my employer can’t say no!

Yes it pushes my out my financial independence date, but it’s totally worth it.

6) Will I remember this?

My final point is a little more philosophical (although still actionable). The first is the test that I apply when I have to make a trade-off between work and personal life. My test is explicitly that deathbed question: Will I remember this on my deathbed, or should go home?

To be clear that isn’t always a clear decision is favour of home. When I’ve applied this test it’s meant I’ve decided to take that work trip to go to a new country; I’ve gone to that 3-day conference on the other side of the country as I’ll hear speakers I have always wanted to hear from; I’ve decided to take up the offer of sporting tickets from a supplier as I’ve always wanted to go to that venue.

Those are things that I will remember and so they are ‘worth’ the time away from my family. But, when it comes to the leaving drinks for the person that I didn’t really know, despite the networking possibilities, that’s usually a no from me.

Shoot for financial independence

Unsurprisingly, underpinning all of this is my journey towards financial independence. Clearly the easiest way to not have to work long hours is to not to have to work.

Despite the benefits the journey can be double-edged. Following on from my rant I’ve run some numbers. What I’m coming to realise is that I can ‘easily’ become financially independent right at the point that my children leave home. Just a few more years of working hard and I’ll be there. But to what end? As I said in a tweet:

I’m not sure that there has EVER been a tweet I agree with more.

This is my biggest FI dilemma. I can hit FI easily… right at the point the kids leave home.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” https://t.co/RUKAyYRCwd

— Caveman @ditchthecave.com (@ditchthecave) July 3, 2019

 

My first world problem is to try to work out what I do over the next few years. I want to be able to have time with my children while they are at home without leaving a massive financial black hole before I can draw my pension.

Concluding remarks

The deathbed regret that comes from having worked too hard is one that I think that many people can relate to today. It’s one of those on the list of regrets that I almost have already so I very much want to avoid it getting worse.

I’m taking steps to avoid that regret so I’m pretty pleased with how my hours in the office have gone down on both a daily and annual basis. With my financial independence plan I also very much hope that I’ve reduced those hours of regretful work on a lifetime basis as well.

Ultimately, I guess I’ll know how well I’ve done when my time comes.

Thoughts?

Is working too hard going to be one of your deathbed regrets? What are you doing about it?