It’s not a choice, because a choice implies it’s one or the other. It’s not. It’s tension. Tension is a this-or-that dilemma in which the answer is paradoxically both. It’s not a black and white decision — it’s more complex than that — it’s grey, somewhere in the middle. It’s a balanced see-saw of fluid percentages.

The choice for founders between family and work is false.

If all you do is work, you will lose your family. The hours spent away from them will erode trust and love. The daily choice to work and not spend time with your wife or kids will build walls between you. Until it’s too late. On the other side, if all you do is spend time with family, your work will suffer. If your work suffers, your paychecks dwindle. If your paychecks dwindle, you can’t provide for your family. Part of love is meeting needs. If you can’t meet the needs of your family, your “love” doesn’t really love to them.

You can't commit to just one

In order for both to happen effectively, you need to agree with yourself to settle for milder success in both areas. It’s not always clear or easy, but I have guardrails in place. For example, I never bring my work laptop into bed. The bed is for rest. And marriage. If I work, I sit in a chair.

Balance

When work and family compete for the same hours of the day, it’s not a “me or them” choice but rather a healthy balancing act requiring clear communication, flexibility, and good planning tools.

<figure><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/max/500/1*px-ucs8R_2K8VYIze3_XzQ" width="680" height="694"><figcaption dir="auto">My baby girl sitting in the kitchen</figcaption></figure>Moments ago, my naked 7-month-old baby daughter with a stinging diaper rash sobbed in my wife’s arms after defecating in the bathtub, where I am now jamming a pair of plyers down the clogged drain attempting to remove a buildup of hair that seems to have no end. I am ready for Samara to crawl out of this drain at any second.My home office, also known as the guest bedroom, is three feet across from the bathroom, so when my child is balling, cinder blocks fall like raindrops on my thinly frozen layer of concentration. It’s impossible to focus.This is a snapshot of a typical day as a founder at home when you have a baby.Just close the door? Nope. That’s an eff you to my bride. That’s rejection. That’s me clearly choosing my work over my family. Too many internal alarms go off if that were to happen.Get an office? Probably going to do that when baby number two arrives. But in early-stage startup mode, there’s no budget for that.It’s true, working from home is a blessing. The flexibility and freedom are unmatched. I see my wife and daughter as much as I want. We visit our extended families often, we hit the beach midweek, we choose our schedules, and by Jove — we’ll sleep in and play tennis in the morning on a Monday if we want to.But sometimes I wish I could work three times as much …that’s the line I’m afraid of. People on their deathbed, <a href="https://humanparts.medium.com/what-its-like-to-be-90-something-368780082573" rel="noopener" dir="ltr">looking back</a> over their lives, only wish they worked less. But I’m not working enough. I could be doing so much more. “What you can do, you must do,” is a short line Tim Ferriss quoted from a stoic philosopher that describes the problem. If we can’t live up to our full potential, we feel dissatisfied or restless as individuals — something feels not quite right. If you are a gifted competition-winning runner, but your boyfriend takes up so much of your time that it prevents you from actually running, you will start to feel bitter.In the startup world, single founders can put in 70 plus hours a week, no problem. I probably work 30–40 hours a week. I try to work smarter not harder, but I know in the back of my head I’m not doing as much as I could.I’m envious of employees for this reason. If I had a regular day job — 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. — there’d be a clean divide. You leave home. You’re at the office. You focus on work. You come home. You focus on family. No competition. No split attention.But working at home all day, I go back and forth like a confused jaguar in a zoo cage between entertaining Baby while my wife pumps breastmilk and negotiating a contract with a client. The baby needs to be fed, the website needs to be launched. If you’ve experienced this, you know that it comes to a point where you have to start asking yourself some brutally honest questions.Where is this desire coming from?Is it wrong to want to work more?Do I not love my family as much as I should?I love my family more than anything. My daughter’s small coo with a tinge of raspiness in her tiny morning voice when she first wakes up is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. My wife’s faithful and fiery love lights up my otherwise dark inner world. She makes me a better person more than any book or blog ever will.I like my work, too. A lot. I feel alive and creative and connected to something bigger than me. It’s a rush to make money from something you’ve made.So I realized something: I will never let the choice between work or family happen. It cannot come to this. It’s a loathsome dilemma that proves poor decisions were made upstream from it. If I find myself thinking: I either love my family or I love my work, make a decision, Dave, then I have unwittingly let myself go too far down a toxic tunnel that ends with an unnecessary dichotomy.The choice for founders between family and work is false. It’s not a choice, because a choice implies it’s one or the other. It’s not. It’s a tension. A tension is a this-or-that dilemma in which the answer is paradoxically both. It’s not a black and white decision — it’s more complex than that — it’s grey, somewhere in the middle. It’s a balanced see-saw of fluid percentages.The choice between family and work is a tension because there’s never enough time for both work and family. If all you do is work, you will lose your family. The hours spent away from them will erode trust and love. The daily choice to work and not spend time with your wife or kids will build walls between you. Until it’s too late.On the other side, if all you do is spend time with family, your work will suffer. If your work suffers, your paychecks dwindle. If your paychecks dwindle, you can’t provide for your family. Part of love is meeting needs. If you can’t meet the needs of your family, your “love” isn’t really love to them.This tension draws out the need for a healthy balance, a compromise. In order for both to happen effectively, you need to agree with yourself to settle for milder success in both areas. Here’s what I mean. For crazy successful and hardworking individuals like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Ben Franklin, et al., their work changed the world, but it destroyed their homelife. Divorce, alienated children, infidelity, broken friendships — to change the world there is often bitter personal cost. Do you want that? Maybe you are called to change the world, but give it some serious thought before you start sacrificing your closest relationships. If you truly think you’re the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, you might have more problems than you think?The compromise on the family side is a little more nuanced and hidden. Most people do a good job of choosing family over their work. Most people prioritize their family first, as they should. Family is a universal value. It’s the moral choice. You always choose family over work. There’s no debate there. But I’d like to probe a little deeper.For many people, we are most comfortable when we are with our families. Together, there are high levels of trust, familiarity, fun, and love. I know this is not the case for everyone — if your home-life was vitriolic growing up, then you know what I’m about to say already. This is for the people who believe family is everything.You could be hiding behind your family. You could be avoiding a deeper purpose for your life by holding up your family as a guise. You could be so comfortable in your family that you’re blocking out opportunities you know you should take to improve your community, your world, or your self.I want to be clear because I have a family and I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way. My point is this: Your family needs you to put yourself out there. Your family needs you to be challenged. Your family needs you to take risks, fail, and succeed — as long as you’re always learning and developing as a person. Don’t bury yourself in your home. Get out in the world, care for something deeply, and show your family that you are an example worth following after.I’m a founder and I’m working from home. I’m doing my best to balance work and family — it’s not always clear or easy, but I have guardrails in place. For example, I never bring my work laptop into bed. The bed is for rest. And marriage. If I work, I sit in a chair.A good balance looks like this: Work doesn’t hold me back from my family and family doesn’t hold me back from my work. Just because I can stroll to the park with my daughter and throw a frisbee with my wife anytime I want doesn’t mean I leave my cofounder hanging. Or if I need to bump a Slack call five minutes to take care of a red diaper rash and give my wife a break, I do it. When work and family compete for the same hours of the day, it’s not a “me or them” choice but rather a healthy balancing act requiring clear communication, flexibility, and good planning tools.In my lifetime, as both my family and my company grow, I refuse to let my days devolve into a fight between my family versus my work. It’s not a fight, it’s a paradigm shift. To live my best life, I need both.

Moments ago, my naked 7-month-old baby daughter with a stinging diaper rash sobbed in my wife’s arms after defecating in the bathtub, where I am now jamming a pair of plyers down the clogged drain…

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M oments ago, my naked 7-month-old baby daughter with a stinging diaper rash sobbed in my wife’s arms after defecating in the bathtub, where I am now jamming a pair of plyers down the clogged drain attempting to remove a buildup of hair that seems to have no end. I am ready for Samara to crawl out of this drain at any second.

My home office, also known as the guest bedroom, is three feet across from the bathroom, so when my child is balling, cinder blocks fall like raindrops on my thinly frozen layer of concentration. It’s impossible to focus.

This is a snapshot of a typical day as a founder at home when you have a baby.

Just close the door? Nope. That’s an eff you to my bride. That’s rejection. That’s me clearly choosing my work over my family. Too many internal alarms go off if that were to happen.

Get an office? Probably going to do that when baby number two arrives. But in early-stage startup mode, there’s no budget for that.

It’s true, working from home is a blessing. The flexibility and freedom are unmatched. I see my wife and daughter as much as I want. We visit our extended families often, we hit the beach midweek, we choose our schedules, and by Jove — we’ll sleep in and play tennis in the morning on a Monday if we want to.

But sometimes I wish I could work three times as much …that’s the line I’m afraid of. People on their deathbed, <a href="https://humanparts.medium.com/what-its-like-to-be-90-something-368780082573">looking back </a>over their lives, only wish they worked less. But I’m not working enough. I could be doing so much more. “What you can do, you must do,” is a short line Tim Ferriss quoted from a stoic philosopher that describes the problem. If we can’t live up to our full potential, we feel dissatisfied or restless as individuals — something feels not quite right. If you are a gifted competition-winning runner, but your boyfriend takes up so much of your time that it prevents you from actually running, you will start to feel bitter.

In the startup world, single founders can put in 70 plus hours a week, no problem. I probably work 30–40 hours a week. I try to work smarter not harder, but I know in the back of my head I’m not doing as much as I could.

I’m envious of employees for this reason. If I had a regular day job — 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. — there’d be a clean divide. You leave home. You’re at the office. You focus on work. You come home. You focus on family. No competition. No split attention.

But working at home all day, I go back and forth like a confused jaguar in a zoo cage between entertaining Baby while my wife pumps breastmilk and negotiating a contract with a client. The baby needs to be fed, the website needs to be launched. If you’ve experienced this, you know that it comes to a point where you have to start asking yourself some brutally honest questions.

Where is this desire coming from?

Is it wrong to want to work more?

Do I not love my family as much as I should?

I love my family more than anything. My daughter’s small coo with a tinge of raspiness in her tiny morning voice when she first wakes up is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. My wife’s faithful and fiery love lights up my otherwise dark inner world. She makes me a better person more than any book or blog ever will.

I like my work, too. A lot. I feel alive and creative and connected to something bigger than me. It’s a rush to make money from something you’ve made.

So I realized something: I will never let the choice between work or family happen. It cannot come to this. It’s a loathsome dilemma that proves poor decisions were made upstream from it. If I find myself thinking: I either love my family or I love my work, make a decision, Dave, then I have unwittingly let myself go too far down a toxic tunnel that ends with an unnecessary dichotomy.

The choice for founders between family and work is false . It’s not a choice, because a choice implies it’s one or the other. It’s not. It’s a tension. A tension is a this-or-that dilemma in which the answer is paradoxically both. It’s not a black and white decision — it’s more complex than that — it’s grey, somewhere in the middle. It’s a balanced see-saw of fluid percentages.

The choice between family and work is a tension because there’s never enough time for both work and family. If all you do is work, you will lose your family. The hours spent away from them will erode trust and love. The daily choice to work and not spend time with your wife or kids will build walls between you. Until it’s too late.

This tension draws out the need for a healthy balance, a compromise. In order for both to happen effectively, you need to agree with yourself to settle for milder success in both areas. Here’s what I mean. For crazy successful and hardworking individuals like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Ben Franklin, et al., their work changed the world, but it destroyed their homelife. Divorce, alienated children, infidelity, broken friendships — to change the world there is often bitter personal cost. Do you want that? Maybe you are called to change the world, but give it some serious thought before you start sacrificing your closest relationships. If you truly think you’re the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, you might have more problems than you think?

The compromise on the family side is a little more nuanced and hidden . Most people do a good job of choosing family over their work. Most people prioritize their family first, as they should. Family is a universal value. It’s the moral choice. You always choose family over work. There’s no debate there. But I’d like to probe a little deeper.

For many people, we are most comfortable when we are with our families. Together, there are high levels of trust, familiarity, fun, and love. I know this is not the case for everyone — if your home-life was vitriolic growing up, then you know what I’m about to say already. This is for the people who believe family is everything.

You could be hiding behind your family. You could be avoiding a deeper purpose for your life by holding up your family as a guise. You could be so comfortable in your family that you’re blocking out opportunities you know you should take to improve your community, your world, or your self.

I want to be clear because I have a family and I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way. My point is this: Your family needs you to put yourself out there. Your family needs you to be challenged. Your family needs you to take risks, fail, and succeed — as long as you’re always learning and developing as a person. Don’t bury yourself in your home. Get out in the world, care for something deeply, and show your family that you are an example worth following after.

I’m a founder and I’m working from home. I’m doing my best to balance work and family — it’s not always clear or easy, but I have guardrails in place. For example, I never bring my work laptop into bed. The bed is for rest. And marriage. If I work, I sit in a chair.

A good balance looks like this : Work doesn’t hold me back from my family and family doesn’t hold me back from my work. Just because I can stroll to the park with my daughter and throw a frisbee with my wife anytime I want doesn’t mean I leave my cofounder hanging. Or if I need to bump a Slack call five minutes to take care of a red diaper rash and give my wife a break, I do it. When work and family compete for the same hours of the day, it’s not a “me or them” choice but rather a healthy balancing act requiring clear communication, flexibility, and good planning tools.

In my lifetime, as both my family and my company grow, I refuse to let my days devolve into a fight between my family versus my work. It’s not a fight, it’s a paradigm shift. To live my best life, I need both.

How to Balance Work and Family When You Work From Home and Love Your Job

The choice for founders between family and work is false.

You can't commit to just one

Balance

DAVE SCHOOLS

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