Work vs life

[Tree09]

How many hours a week do you guys do you guys work? How many hours a day do you work on days that you work? How many days a month do you do family stuff rather then work (weekends included)?

I've always been a wierdo, and before the wife and kids i would work a ton. I'm talking like 5 16s, then do landscaping on the weekends before i got in the fitters. After i got in it was more of the same, and if i wasn't working i was partying. Growing up i did decent in school, played multiple sports, had a mowing business, etc. It was just how my family always did stuff, working in one form or another basically every waking moment. As a father and husband I'm learning that not everyone is shall we say "motivated or hungry" as i was, and maybe being that way isn't the best way to be. I know it's kinda dependant on your station in life, your kids ages, standard of living, etc. I'm just curious of what everyone else here is doing, thx.

 

[cory]

Ya know, takes all kinds to make the world go round.

I do 12 hrs a day minimum and at least a half day on the weekends. Complaining not bragging, for sure. If I could run a successful biz in 40 hrs/week, I'd be bragging.

Note my sig below, which I nabbed from something FFZ said about his grandfather and his work habits. It struck a chord with me.

 

[cory]

Because all my work is ultra local, I do a lot of fitting in family stuff in between working as travel time is next to nothing.

 

[flushcut]

I try and stick to 5 8's but usually I run estimates half of Saturday. And some of those 8's becomes 10's or 11's depending on the job and schedule load. Then there is the non paid work like paper work, mowing the properties which is five to seven hours depending on which pattern I mow. So work never really stops but working or resting for work is about the norm.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

About 30 hour weeks here. Not counting maintenance, book keeping and quotes. I make days in the schedule for family stuff. And I keep it flexible. We have heat warnings right now. So tomorrow, taking it off.
I used to be a lot more work before I had kids. Two jobs were common. Long days or nights. Not going to get rich doing this work. Just life day to day. Less accidents if we keep the physical under 6 hours daily.
Been nice when the kids were little, fixing brekkie every morning. Fixing dinner every night. Helped Lilly with her math the other night. More imortant things.

 

[Bodean]

My buddy Trav in Sonoma does 6 hour days with shop days on fridays....

it gets pretty hot out there.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

I guess we still stay busy. Rob will get up early and mill wood or process some on the home front. Then work with me. Come home take a break and mill some more in the cool. He'll mill over the weekend too.
I get done with work and its estimate and getting fueled up for the next day time. Then figuring out dinner between calls. Often repairs in the evening. Dinners at the club once a month. Board meetings at the club every other. Trap team practice weekly. One shoot a month. Once a month work at my parents or take on a friend's job that needs help but no money. And repairs to the micro farm. Fencing etc. Always sumptin.
Come to think of it, there has been a few nights this week i did not get a shower till after 9. Just running.

 

[cory]

As Squisher once said, when you own a business, the To Do list never ends, it never goes away.

 

[flushcut]

23 1/2 hours a day. The 1/2 hour is to eat, sleep, shit, and piss.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

You got one of dem towable out houses son?

 

[lxskllr]

As little as possible. I seem to be around 30hr/week currently. That would actually be pretty good if I could plan around it, but I spend a lot of time in the office not doing much of anything, but being threatened with work. That might be even be worse than working, cause my time's being taken, but I can't bill for it. I mean legally I could, but I don't care about the law. I'll pad the jobs a bit, and take a loss on some, so me and the boss lose a little. Three 10hr days would be wonderful. Three days of solid work, and four days off. That's how it should be.

 

[PCTREE]

Ive always been a super motivated individual. At 12 I got my first paper route even though in England I think you had to be 14. I always got to the shop at 5-55am ready for the door to open and then pulled my route and rolled. After about 6 months the boss said heck with it and asked me to pull all the routes for the other kids too, which was his job . After about a year he gave me a key and I opened up, I often had to wait for him to show up as he had a hard time getting up, he was English so drank a lot. Been that way my whole life.

Upon reflection I don't think it is healthy or good for your personal life but hey thats how I am. I worked today till about 9 trouble shooting an electrical problem on a chipper. Im really trying to spend more time on recreation but at my stage in life its hard to change.

When I was trying to get Ropetek rolling I worked at least 80 hours a week. Unfortunately that was when we had just had kids, missed out a lot on some good times. Now the kids are both teens and want nothing to do with me, Probably because when they were young I wasn't around.

Only good thing about being a workaholic is you have money !!

 

[Mellow]

We average about 20-25 hours a week(four days) doing tree work. I do about 2-4 hours of bids on the off day. Weekends are family time, evenings are wife time.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

I'm working on getting it down to 4 day weeks. Then down to 3 and possibly look into a part time gig somewhere to fill a couple days no stress.

 

[Tree09]

I think most kids are like that as teens, but i get the point. When i was sick and thinking it might be the end i didn't ever think i should have worked less because i was working for a reason. I did wish i had done more fun things tho, so I'm working on doing that more. Thanks for the replies so far, I'm feeling better about not working quite as much as i used to, which was in hindsight pretty much all the time. I'm now working at least 40 as a fitter (often more) and then between mowing and other house maintenence, working on stuff like the trailer loader or backhoe, and then doing a tree here and there I'm in the 50 to 60 hours without even trying too hard. This is less than normal for me tho, so as I'm feeling better I'm mentally wanting to ramp up more and more but maybe should just relax a bit and prioritize my family more.

Right before i got sick last year i was easily in the 80 plus a week, working 6 10s as a fitter then cutting trees and stuff after work, and then on the weekends too. On pipeline 6 10s is the standard work week, and you often will work far more. Many of my friends and family are pretty much the same way, so it's good to hear it's different for some. When i was sick i didn't do much at all, so I'm playing catch up around the house and not getting stuff done like i had hoped, but i guess I'm on track and it will come with time. Thanks again guys.

 

[Mick!]

I don’t work very long hours. But I do try and make those hours as lucrative as I can.

I never really count the mucking about in the workshop or driving around bidding as work.

I’ve no kids so it’s not like I’m spending the spare time making precious memories or anything.

Mickey Flanagan sums up my favourite pursuit.

 

[flushcut]

You got one of dem towable out houses son?

Umm it's called a chip truck....

 

[biggun]

I work to live, rather than living to work.

Never understood why people would work themselves into an early grave. No point being the richest corpse in the graveyard.

Chill, spend some time with friends and family and have fun.

We are only here once, might as well try and enjoy it.

(Obviously I do appreciate different people, geographic locations and situations are very different.)

 

[pigwot]

At 65 I work maybe three to four hours a day, with sometimes no break for weeks and other times many days off in between. The rest of those short days get eaten up by doing pro bono home health visits with the truly elderly (older than 85) in the neighborhood and my endless To-Do list items. Every other week or so I get roped into a full day of 8 to 10 hours, helping out a friend’s tree service or cranking out cabinets at another friend’s shop. The following day after a long day I rarely get as much done and the osteoarthritis typically acts up.

Today: up at 3:00am; dropped wife off at airport 41 minutes away. ( heading to LA; I’ll follow in ten days to take care of a granddaughter). Back home for cup of Joe and breakfast. Read a few chapters of “One Good Turn” - a history of the screwdriver and the screw by Witold Rybczynski. Now: checked email; looking at new posts at the Treehouse. Next: read a chapter with granddaughter in Thailand before she heads to bed. Then: weigh and package and ship a piece of wood to send to a retired yacht repair/woodworker turned ukelele-maker, as second thank you for sending me the missing piece on my 1908 patternmaker’s vice. Then: go buy a headlamp bulb for the one burnt out on the wife’s 1st gen Prius (260k miles on it). Then: continue working on hydraulics on the Kubota till it gets too hot out. Then: go set up new iPad Pro for my 90 year old woodworking friend/neighbor. Then: take truck in to get inspected and tags renewed. Then: Finish turning pegs for the toy puzzles I am making for the grandkids. My afternoon break will be starting in on the gardens maintenance list Karen left me (see photo). This evening after dinner I’ll start moving everything away from the rim joists in the basement to clean and then spray-foam insulate them.

 

[pantheraba]

Good description, Pat. To be honest that sounds a lot like I probably do things. I still run our X-ray business so I'm coordinating resources, figuring out logistics, helping over the phone with service calls, ordering supplies, doing quotes, etc. But those things don't happen constantly back to back all day. There's plenty of times in between x-ray activities that I am checking the Treehouse, working a yoga session, working in a strength workout, or a bando workout. Or going to see the grandkids, or taking Hayden to learn to drive. My actual hours where I do the x-ray, money generating work vary a lot. I'll often catch myself at 10:00 or 11:00 at night realizing there's something that I needed to get done and take two or three hours to just knock it out. That's often drawing an x-ray room so that we can decide if something will fit or if there are options of how to set things up, working up the shielding needed for the radiation or the electrical layout needed for the equipment... Last night the thing that got my late night attention was remembering I had started interacting with the State of Georgia to send them some physics documents they needed for the recent equipment installation and had to pull together the official physicist documents to send along to the State. I got that finished shortly after midnight and finally went on to bed but I just have gotten up at 8:00 since I got to bed so late. My hours get to vary a good bit like that but I really like not having to set an alarm clock to be honest with you. So basically I guess I stay busy like you but don't know exactly what counts as work sometimes and what does not. I think of some things as not necessarily "work" but always try to stay productive in some way.

Well... Your long post apparently inspired me to get long-winded too. And that looks like a an official wifey type honey-do list. Man, she's got your stuff figured out... 😄

 

[pantheraba]

Here's an example of what an x-ray room drawing looks like. Right now I'm working up the verbal descriptions of the junction boxes and circuit breakers and conduits and wall bumper rails, outlets and LAN, etc that are part of the process.

 

[cory]

We average about 20-25 hours a week(four days) doing tree work.

Sounds like you are doing 3 days/week of treework. How do your guys get by on that, do they do other things?

 

[Mellow]

Average day is about 5 or 6 hours. It's just me and one guy. He's fine with it; been with me for 20 years now. He likes to hunt and fish on his time off. I pay him for 30 hours minimum every week.

 

[Fiddler]

I presently average ~4 hrs a morning every morning during the Summer...Winter off.

As my boss ages and health problems become more of a challenge for him I've been gradually taking on more of the workload.

 

[Jed]

Man, I love the treehouse.

I’ve worked almost exactly 48 hours a week for about the last 15 years, and I’m getting stinkin OLD. Everything hurts. I still drink rather a lot, and I have to (read want to) spend ALL of my off-time with my family. Weirdest thing: I wouldn’t change even one single item in my life right now unless an angel of God commanded me to.