“I Should Have Worked More”
I’m not sure when I first heard this, but it definitely came from a mentor early in my life, when I was talking about a typical work week for me (80+ hours), and they said this to me:
“No one on their death bed ever said that they should have worked more.”
It was in that moment, and a lot of moments afterwards, like when I just finished up a 12 hour day, came home to an empty bed (or one where my significant other was already asleep), when I grabbed some fast food and gobbled it down in the car, and so on and so on, that it really sank in that I was missing out on a large portion of why I was alive at this time and what my purpose was and most importantly — what was I missing since I worked so much. (Yes, yes I know that that was one hell of a run-on sentence, sorry.)
My girlfriend, who is now my wife, used to come home, after a 12 hour day, talk about how she was going to have to go in over the weekend to finish some work, and then talk about how she wished she had more time for me and our relationship. That was when she first heard me say: “No one on their death bed ever said that they should have worked more.” The first couple of times I said that, she would look at me like was was crazy, not quite getting it.
But after a few months of me only giving this response, she started to say “You know what, I’m not going in this weekend. The company will survive, there is no ‘life or death’ that will occur if this isn’t done on Monday instead of Saturday”.
She started keeping her weekends free, but started working 14 hour days.
Anytime she talked about how exhausted she was, I always replied with the above quote.
A short time later after she upped her weekday hours, I added (something I have written about a lot) the quote of:
“Do the best you can in the time you have.”
If you need to take 12 hours to finish a project because you committed to a timeline, then by all means, work the 12 hours. But, if the company keeps standing if you only work for 10 hours, you aren’t fired, and actually, you may become more energetic and productive if you have the mindset of doing your best in the time you have. Some people call it a “work life balance”.
Why we work so hard for so little reward in our life is a mystery that will occur until the end of time.
I get it. I busted my butt the first two decades of my professional career to get to where I wanted to get to. But, halfway through those decades is when I heard the quote of “No one ever said on their deathbed that they should have worked more”. I realized that if I busted my butt when I was young, I could slow down, enjoy life, enjoy everything that life has to offer, but only after I became a bit older and had achieved my goals. (Of course, if I had not set goals and worked to achieve them, I may be still working long days and every weekend, chasing something that I didn’t know I didn’t need.)
Some people work until their last breath. In some ways, I get that. After growing up in Montana and seeing the ranchers and farmers, who were well into their 70’s and 80’s, going out every day to work the land, I get it. If they don’t do it and no one else will, it is a tough decision to walk away from that — it’s a business that they built and truly love — they are doing it out of joy, not because of an obligation to a company. But for those of who are doing to “chase the almighty buck” or for someone else to achieve the “almighty buck”, I don’t get that.
NOTE: Don’t get me wrong — I love helping people, especially entrepreneurs and start-ups achieve every dream they had, from growing a market or achieving the millions in profit they thought they could. I do that now for the joy of it, not because I have to work to chase the big dollars.
Work hard, save money, enjoy family and friends, live your life to the best of your ability and within your means, and look back on your life, when you are on your deathbed, and know that you lived it to the fullest — because you didn’t make work your priority, but chose other priorities instead.