Our community is filled with hard-working, high achieving entrepreneurs and creatives and so work-life balance is a complicated, but highly relevant topic. We’ve shared some responses from the community about work life balance and how their views have evolved over time below.

Claire Craven | Landscape Designer & Artist

My work-life balance has varied wildly over the course of my life. I grew up in France, where I was raised by a French mother and an American father, before moving to the US for University, where I studied Architecture. The demands of my academic and professional career were very high, and for many years they took precedence over everything else. I did great work alongside great people, but I was never good at setting boundaries; I don’t think my French childhood prepared me too well for the cult of American productivity. Read more>>

Christina Munsey | Singer-Songwriter

Work-life balance has always been something I’ve struggled with. The music industry isn’t a clock-in, clock-out job, it’s pretty much a 24/7 thing. In this line of work, your schedule is incredibly inconsistent, and even when you’re not technically working, the songwriting part of your mind is always on and ready to grab inspiration from virtually anything – casual conversations with people, watching shows and movies, looking at an object for 2 seconds longer than you normally would and having an epiphany about it, or even the turn signal clicky noise in the car when you’re driving home from running errands that you use as a metronome for writing a song. Read more>>

Courtney Reinhardt | Permanent Makeup Artist and Educator

Before having kids and in my full time management role I would work a minimum of 40 hours a week. I would say yes to absolutely any opportunity to work additional hours, take on projects, and work events in order to advance. In doing so I would rearrange anything going on in my personal life. This caused significant stress, burnout, and exhaustion, and ultimately led me to wanting to work for myself. Read more>>