■ A fortnightly business advice column by Whakatāne accountant and business adviser, Jason Lougher

Someone very special in my life is turning 50. We’ve only been together a couple of years, but her birthday has still got me thinking about how quickly time moves.

Where on earth does it go?

A milestone like 50 makes you stop and look at everything that has filled the years.

Work, kids, school runs, Saturday morning sport, deadlines, late nights and everything in between.

It made me look back at my own years too, and at how quietly a decade or two can slip past while you’re busy.

When I look back, I want to be honest with you.

There have been plenty of times when I haven’t juggled work and home well at all.

Sometimes the business got the best of me and the people at home got whatever was left.

Other times I tried to do both at once and didn’t do either particularly well.

I don’t think I’m alone in that.

I see it a lot with the business owners I work with. When you own a business, it doesn’t stay at the office.

It comes home with you in your phone, sits at the dinner table with you and wakes you up at 3am wondering whether a customer is going to pay.

Most owners I know aren’t short on effort.

If anything, they’re giving too much of it in one direction.

The truth is, I don’t have this all figured out. But here are a few things I’m slowly learning.

You can’t do both at the same time, so stop trying.

For years I thought juggling meant answering emails on the sideline or taking a call while cooking dinner.

It doesn’t. It just means you’re half in two places and fully in neither.

These days I’m trying to be in one place at a time.

When I’m at work, I’m at work. When I’m home, I try hard to actually be home. I don’t always manage it, but it’s a better goal.

Family deserves a spot in the diary too.

We would never miss a meeting with the bank or IRD, yet, we’ll happily cancel on the people we love because something came up at work.

If something matters at home, put it in the calendar and treat it like your most important client. Because it is.

You can’t be the only one holding everything up. A lot of owners can’t step away because everything runs through them.

Every decision, every phone call, every problem. That isn’t really a work-life balance problem. It’s a business problem, and it’s fixable.

Building a team you trust, writing down how things are done and letting other people make decisions is what eventually gives you your evenings and weekends back.

It’s taken me a long time to learn that one, and I’m still learning it.

Be kind to yourself when you drop a ball, because you will.

Some weeks work has to win. A big deadline, a staff member away, a customer in trouble.

Other weeks home has to win. Balance doesn’t happen every single day. It’s something you look at over a month or a year, asking whether the people who matter most are getting enough of you.

That’s really the question a 50th birthday asks.

Not how much did you get done, but who did you spend the time with?

None of us get those years back. The kids won’t be this age again, and the people we love won’t always be just down the hall.

The business will still be there on Monday morning, and there will always be another email to answer.

So, here’s my challenge for this week.

Pick one thing at home you have been putting off because work keeps getting in the way.

A dinner, a walk, a weekend away, a call to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while.

Put it in the diary and protect it like you would a meeting with your biggest customer.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a birthday to get ready for.

I do like to remind people that she’s older than me. She is.

The trouble is I look older than her, so the joke never lands quite the way I’d like.

■ Jason Lougher is the owner of Calc Business Advisors & Chartered Accountants. Our team advise businesses throughout the Eastern Bay of Plenty — and across New Zealand. Like this article or want to chat? Feel free to send me an email: [email protected]