Meaning Of Health & Wellbeing For A Start-up Entrepreneur
If a working professional is struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance as much as an entrepreneur then why do we seem to believe otherwise?
Having spent over 8 years with Unilever and now for the last two years being an entrepreneur, quest to answer this question led me to introspective thought on a calmer than usual Sunday!
The introspection started with a simple question to myself - is my wellbeing better off now as an entrepreneur or earlier as a Unilever professional. Just like your work life is closely defined by your line manager and team, similarly, your non-work life is defined by your family. Hence, I asked my wife the same question. She immediately concluded - fours weeks of paid holiday, absolutely free Sundays, partly free Saturdays and long weekend trips made the job better than entrepreneurship. However, she added - "All of us seem happier than ever".
Well, the first dimension was on time axis - pretty much measurable and objective. The second dimension of happiness just does not allow you to do the math to come to any conclusion! Therefore, the question came- is wellbeing defined on the time axis or happiness axis or is work-life balance a function of time or emotion?
This reminded me of a long discussion I had with my mentor more than five years back on a 2007 Harvard Business Review article named "Managing your Energy, not your Time". I remembered concluding the discussion that ‘time is a finite resource, don’t fight for it’. Energy is an infinite resource, fight for it to make time irrelevant. This is what I believe my wife was hinting at while debating about time versus happiness.
The question then essentially arises is how do you tap into this infinite resource of energy. Just like life is made of a multitude of experiences, in the past, here again, I would like to refer back to a book I read long back gifted by my nutritionist friend - "Traditional Nutrition" by Ben Hirshberg. The book beautifully concludes with Natural Food, Exercise & Socialising as the only three reasons for holistic wellbeing and long life.
But then why couldn’t I tap this infinite resource of energy while I was at Unilever? I guess the answer requires longer introspection but three things came to my mind - flexibility in managing my schedule, building something that represents me from the scratch and absence of time! Sometimes, the lack of something makes you value it so much that you make the most of it. I believe in spending quality time with my family, which boosts my energy rather than binge-watching any web series during weekends.
