Can you have a financially-successful career and a successful personal life at the same time? (family, children)

[kinkytoes]

I concur that it is a little difficult. As a single person where I live a 6-figure income doesn't really seem to be enough to have a luxurious life. Who thought I would ever say that? Personally, I have to keep working in order to pay my bills LOL. So actually I am not successful...but I'm not good at trying to find a relationship and being serious about work/school at the same time. Boyfriends/husbands take a lot of effort.

Actually, working or starting a business is easier. There's as much work, but the outcomes are more predictable. I'm planning to start another business currently, and my goal is to try to amass several millions of dollars. For a woman, at least for me it doesn't seem to really be possible to do that and have a relationship at the same time.

The guy doesnt' end up being the "support" and I still end up cooking, making appointments, taking care of him AND working at the same time. It is possible I didn't find the right guy, but as a couple of the other guys posted, I have also concluded that may not happen for me.

At any rate, I still want to have children (adoption), and it is a waste of time at this stage in my life to try to hunt for a mate when I could have a successful (hopefully) company and have assets to leave to my kids.

If I'm better off financially, I will also have more time to spend with the children, and be able to afford domestic help...something a husband may not be willing or able to provide. I am actually sorry I wasted the time I did dating etc. Dating for me was not really fun LOL, and I put myself through a lot of stress looking for "Mr. Right" instead of just enjoying dating new guys.

I do know some older people who have millions of dollars. I guess that's successful, right. Those guys do seem to have happy lives and working relationships. They take trips and enjoy their lives etc. Hopefully one day I can get to that point. I am going to try to maintain my physical health so that one day I'll be able to also enjoy my leisure time and children (hopefully).

[cpg35223]

Here's the bargain you make:

1. You can have a successful career.
2. You can have a terrific and rewarding family life.
3. You can have a host of hobbies and pursuits, spending lots of time with your friends.

Now. Choose any two. With two, it's just a matter of organization. With all three, you'd need to warp the space-time continuum in order to keep up with all the demands.

Before I sold my biz, I was pulling 60-70 hour weeks regularly and trying to be the world's greatest dad as a little league coach, etc. etc. etc.

Managed both. But I found my friendships and hobbies falling by the wayside, because between work and family, I was exhausted at all times.

Once I sold my biz and took on a more sane professional schedule, it got a good deal better, chiefly because I have pretty rigid lines drawn on what professional obligations may or may not intrude on my personal time. For example, my clients simply know to not call me from 4 p.m. on except in the case of emergencies, because I'm dealing with homework and cooking dinner. After 4 p.m., they e-mail me and I will respond later in the evening.

[sierraAZ]

Originally Posted by Djuna

I don't know, Heidi and Seal make it look pretty easy.

They look so sweet together!

[Wolfpacker]

Originally Posted by sierraAZ

They look so sweet together!

I'm sure it helps when they got nannies, managers, and assistants.

[dnvrsoul]

Good question..I haven't been able to do it...one will be great and the other in the crapper-

Right now I'm toying with a huge decision-I was offered a job in Denver with my company to manage two departments-I love my job and this is the opportunity I've been waiting for-to move up...my other half told me hell no I'm not moving....

[Currency Pair Crocodile]

Many stupid people in my line of work spend half a day psycho-analyzing spreadsheets and graphs for hours.

But one Antlered Chamataka is a mathematical/tech geek, thanks to my underlying tech degree, which my management peers don't have...... so I design computer programs and macros which does the work for me in minutes and I end up chilling out, making coffee, binge posting on C/D and in the meantime attending meetings and designing more stuff to automate work.

They rant and rave about how fast I am, yet they don't see the tricks underneath People have told me I do the work of two people within a normal one guy's work schedule on a given business day. I have mastered this art coming from an Indian cultural background where reckless competition was rife since I was 7 or something. I believe we were trained to be super-aggressive and cutthroat right from middle school.

Yet, sometimes, when the situation demands I end up working late and on weekends.

But I absolutely enjoy work, I enjoy my personal life, I find the time to work out at least a couple hours and another couple hours to perform stock market research.

Time management is an art that comes only to the best of the best.

[Currency Pair Crocodile]

The best example of how I balanced between personal life and work right at the young age of 23, just two years into my career as a business analyst/design specialist for a semiconductor firm.

For some security compliance audit, it was determined that the information in the footer of every business/tech spec document be modified to something to reflect the newest compliance methodology.

And we're talking hundreds of documents per line of business across the org. Global process assets library gave up on pushing it across coz Word 2002 wasn't that programmable internally back then, like how advanced Word 2007 or later can be these days.

So the individual teams were left to their own fate and 72 hours time to comply before Monday and we get the memo thursday. Teams were told to take hundreds of their business/tech docs and manually update them, so it was a fire drill cutting across the horizontal.

I quickly wrote some VB code which would manipulate the word docs - pick docs in a specified folder and tamper with the footers in every page, without tampering with the rest of the docs. Took an hour for me to code and test, and then I performed the action by shortly after lunch on Friday.

My manager was thrilled and he broadcast the news across the org. The code was used across several teams and by Friday evening, everybody went home. Needless to say I got a pay hike and terrific appraisal And the most important thing, I went back to my personal life all weekend.

[cpg35223]

Originally Posted by Antlered Chamataka

The best example of how I balanced between personal life and work right at the young age of 23, just two years into my career as a business analyst/design specialist for a semiconductor firm.

For some security compliance audit, it was determined that the information in the footer of every business/tech spec document be modified to something to reflect the newest compliance methodology.

And we're talking hundreds of documents per line of business across the org. Global process assets library gave up on pushing it across coz Word 2002 wasn't that programmable internally back then, like how advanced Word 2007 or later can be these days.

So the individual teams were left to their own fate and 72 hours time to comply before Monday and we get the memo thursday. Teams were told to take hundreds of their business/tech docs and manually update them, so it was a fire drill cutting across the horizontal.

I quickly wrote some VB code which would manipulate the word docs - pick docs in a specified folder and tamper with the footers in every page, without tampering with the rest of the docs. Took an hour for me to code and test, and then I performed the action by shortly after lunch on Friday.

My manager was thrilled and he broadcast the news across the org. The code was used across several teams and by Friday evening, everybody went home. Needless to say I got a pay hike and terrific appraisal And the most important thing, I went back to my personal life all weekend.

Yes but, braggadocio aside, you really didn't address the true nature of the question. Time management works quite well when you are single or don't have children and a household to maintain. During the early parts of my career, I routinely pulled 60-80 hour weeks, had a great single life, then a great married life. Heck, looking back, I can't believe how much free time I had even when I was working like a quarry slave.

Then the kids came.

Suddenly, you have to make very hard choices, because children and all the obligations that go with them can't be managed through the adroit use of time. No matter what, there are the soccer practices, the school activities, and the countless other things that take up your nights and weekends--things that simply cannot be allotted time on a calendar or a daily planner. When those things start to happen in your life, you have to assign priorities, because it becomes impossible to do it all. And if you try to do it all, you do none of it well.

Now that my kids are becoming more independent, we've begun to regain some of our free time, which means more time for our passions and friends. While I love my children, I love being able to reconnect with friends again and take back up some of my favorite pursuits that simply had to be deferred.

[Danbo1957]

No.

[nj21]

I don't think its possible. I have been trying to have a successful personal life and my professional life has suffered immensely. I've decided to switch gears and once again focus on my floundering career for a more successful one.