While you’re building your business, are you making time for those you love?

He was like a dog with a bone.

My friend’s husband woke up every morning and spent the day working towards his business goals like the day before and the day before. He started running his blog since Mid-2018. And an online publication he runs with his business partner. Just a few more years, he told himself. Just until my blog has enough email subscribers and generates money. Just until Google redirects most readers’ questions to my blog. Just until thousands of readers read my publication every month.

Almost there.

Time and time again, he told himself, “I’ll slow down soon. I’ll spend quality time with my wife. Just let me work hard this year and build my online businesses.” This is the lie, he told himself, the rationale for why he barely looked at his wife for three years.

Except, even after his online businesses started generating money, the slowing down never happened.

The cost of building something we love.

We talk about how it’s not all fun and games and there is no such thing as an overnight success. We talk about how we struggle financially a lot when we’re building something we love. We talk about the burnout, stress, or mental exhaustion we go through just to get our idea or business floating.

But we don’t talk enough about the flesh and blood we barely look at who’s sitting next to us when we spend 24/7 building something we love. We don’t talk enough about what this dogged determination to build something we love might cost us.

My friend’s husband spent late nights stooped over a laptop on their couch. He scarfed down some food while holding his laptop and spent entire days pounding away on his keyboard. His wife cooked. She cleaned. She did the groceries. She would ask if he wanted to go for a walk, or just sit and talk, and he’d wave his hand, dismissing her.

My friend helplessly watched the man she loves slowly slipping away from her.

The irony?

He wanted to grow his online businesses so they could have an amazing life. He wanted to be financially independent so they could spend more time together.

His dog with a bone mindset for building something he loved cost him his wife. She’s no longer sitting on the couch with him.

Eventually, she packed her bags and moved out.

Research supports the psychology behind our dogged determinedness.

Perhaps you’re familiar with this experience: After a long week of building your business, the weekend finally arrives. It’s time to put your laptop away and spend the whole day with your partner. However, before 9 a.m. Saturday morning, you answer one business email to a client and before you know it, it’s 5 p.m.

You didn’t say two words to your partner the whole day.

According to the chief director of the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. Sandra Chapman, we have a compulsion to build our business. That obsession overrides other potential sources of pleasure, such as spending time with our loved ones. Our brain can become addicted to doing more just as it can to more familiar sources of addiction, such as drugs, gambling, eating, or shopping.

“A person might crave the recognition their work gives them or the salary increases they get. The problem is that just like all addictions, over time a person needs more and more to be satisfied and then it starts to work against you. Withdrawal symptoms include increased anxiety, depression, and fear.”

Did you catch all that?

The worst part?

Society rewards the addiction to doing more. As a black woman teaching in an institute and running a blog simultaneously, I relate. I feel like I’ve to apologize for taking a day off and just resting my head on my pillow.

This dogged determinedness also has an expensive cost.

“It’s seen as a good thing: the more you work, the better. Many people don’t realize the harm it causes until a divorce occurs and a family is broken apart.” says Chapman.

My friend’s story is a perfect example.

She came a distant second to her husband’s business for three years, which she told me gave him a “rush”. She even confessed to me he gave her access to his calendar. He told her she could use it to book time with him.

Now he wonders why his wife said she felt so distant, so isolated, and so alone.

This is not to say building something we love is not important. It is.

But…

Something else matters more.

We worry about whether we have the skills to compete in our business. We worry whether we have enough determination to build our business from the ground up. We worry about when or if we’re going to profit from our business.

But we should also worry about being unavailable or absent in our relationships.

Over the past 3 years, I’ve come to identify myself strongly with my blog, Banchi Inspirations. It’s inevitable when you surrender yourself to an online business and commit to a strong yet evolving vision of what it can be.

But I remind myself I’m so much more than what I’m building and that I need a rich personal life too. I won’t allow building my blog to take every second of my life. It’s possible to run a business and still have a full personal life. If tomorrow is my last day on earth, my life would still be full — I have friends, family, and rich personal life I cultivated through the years.

Even when we’re busy, we make time for crucial things in life. We eat. We go to the bathroom. We sleep. And yet, we often abandon precious relationships when we’re determined to succeed in our business. We tell ourselves we will spend time with loved ones when we get enough money or our startup takes off.

In this dogged determination, we lose sight of what matters more.

When I think about exciting moments and memories in my life, being published in big publications or standing in front of 500 people and giving a speech doesn’t come up. It’s those moments with my family. It’s those moments with my partner. It’s those moments I shared my blog’s success with my close friends. Those are the moments that fulfill us.

Let us balance business and personal life.

Yes, build something you love with determination. Resolve. Persistence. Push through obstacles.

But also slow down and look at someone you love. People you love have to be more than an accident. You’ve to spend time with them.

It’s not always easy to love the people you care about. You won’t always love them. Sometimes they’ll annoy you, or you’ll disagree. That’s okay. No one and no relationship is perfect.

We’re all doing the best we can.

What matters is making time for someone you love, even if your relationship has ups and downs.

By making time, I don’t mean taking a break from building your business and scrolling through Facebook or checking your stocks. I don’t mean thinking about your next big project when you’re snuggling with your loved one. I don’t mean sending business emails while you’re hanging out with family.

I’m talking about a quality time when you’re fully present with loved ones.

Make quality time true quality time.

Even if we have an important business, a deadline, an overflowing inbox, and incessant lists of to-do tasks, let us not be someone who takes a few bites of food, glances up, and blinks in surprise because we forgot our spouse was there.

Let us refuse to build something we love while abandoning our loved ones, but also let us not postpone spending time with our loved ones for a future time when our business takes off.

Let us build our business, but let us not forget why we’re determined to succeed in our business.

Let us mark every growth in our business with its deserved color, then let us not forget to look up at someone we love tearing out the sheets, rolling them into a ball, and pushing them with their big feet down to the bottom of the bed. Let us pause and smell the rain lingering in the air with someone we love. Let us gaze at an insane bright double rainbow. Let us watch the sun’s rays play with the golden leaves.

When you’re an entrepreneur, the fire’s burning, and sometimes it’s burning with blazing flames.

Still…

While you’re building something you love, turn to look at your significant other. Maybe instead of spending 24/7 running your blog, or YouTube channel, or Podcast, go for a walk or make love or pull anything out of the fridge and sit at the dining room table. Do it now, before you look back and realize someone you love has become a roommate, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

To your inspiration,

Banchi