Do you really love what you do

Millennium Cargo Services Ltd

This year was a big year for my family.

My youngest daughter completed her exams and finished school.

So earlier this summer we decided to make the most of being able to travel during the school term and took an early family holiday.

We booked 2 weeks in Lanzarote, in a lovely resort by the sea. It had great restaurants, nice bars, beautiful scenery and a private villa with pool. Perfect!

If you’ve followed me for any amount of time you’ll know that I love to travel.

Whether it’s a trip to Hong Kong to speak to our partners, a hop over to Amsterdam for a conference or a family holiday in the sun. I just love it.

Family holidays are the best. As my kids have grown older I have become more and more aware of what little time we still have left to spend as a family.

It won’t be long before they’ve flown the nest and family holidays become a thing of the past.

Because of this, I tend to do very little work when we’re away together.

But as a business owner I don’t completely shut off.

All the day to day management of the business stays at the office, but I do still manage one or two key client accounts.

An old friend of mine said something about this that made me think.

In discussing my holiday and the work I would continue to do while we were away, he tried to commiserate with me.

Telling me what a shame it was that I would have to work on my holiday, and how hard it must be for me to never get proper time off. This shocked me.

I hadn’t really thought of it like that. I am happy to keep doing little bits of work on my trip. But then I realised why he felt differently.

This year I celebrate over 30 years working in the freight industry.

That’s over three decades of hard work, long hours, long haul trips and high pressure contracts.

But I still absolutely love what I do. When you love what you do then working doesn’t feel like work. You find yourself eating, sleeping and breathing it, not because you have to, but because you want to. I’m more than happy to do a little work while I am on holiday.

I love speaking to my customers and I love thinking, planning and coming up with ways to move the business forward. Of course, family time takes priority while we’re away.

But I don’t have to totally disconnect from my business in order to relax and have a good time.

But there’s been a lot of pressure on Entrepreneurs recently to find more of this mythical “life balance”.

Speak to a non-business owner about it and they’ll ask you if you ever take “time off”? To do what? Watch TV?

I’m not at all advocating workaholism, managing your time is important and making sure you have time for your family, health or other important things matters too.

But instead I am questioning the idea that in order to have “life balance” we have to disconnect from our business and stare at a box.

If you love what you do, like I do, then work isn’t work. If you don’t, then maybe you need to look at making a change…