Over the past 12 months, I’ve been fortunate enough to have interesting conversations with some really amazing people from around the world about a topic that I’m super passionate about: work-life balance.
And to think that I was on the verge of shutting down Balance the Grind.
Rewind a few years back: Balance the Grind originally started out as a health & fitness blog; the goal was to interview personal trainers, coaches, athletes, etc. about how they balance the rigours of training and discipline with life. We also published some advice-based health & fitness content too, such as:
- 10 Healthy Snack Ideas to Bring to Work
- How Does Intermittent Fasting Work?
- Health Benefits of Having a Good Posture
- Benefits to Working Out Early in the Morning
But I struggled to pick up steam with the concept and the blog quickly fizzled out. Plus, my wife Catarina and I welcomed our son Frankie in March 2018 so I didn’t touch Balance the Grind for a couple of years. My little side project was pretty much over.
Or so I thought.
For some weird reason, I kept renewing the domain and web hosting every year – something in the back of my mind kept telling me that I’ll come back to this.
May 2019
Work-life balance has always been a huge passion of mine, but especially as a new dad. I spent hours looking and reading interviews from people from a wide range of careers and lifestyles about their work-life balance and typical day in the life. I was obsessed with the nitty gritty, I wanted to learn more about their process, but there wasn’t a central hub I could find for everything I wanted to know – My Morning Routine came the closest.
I wanted to read conversations with real people working on balancing their work and life. So I decided to do it myself.
Since our relaunch last year, we have interviewed over 600 people, across a variety of roles and industries, including:
- 62 CEOs
- 195 startup founders, business owners & entrepreneurs
- 23 coaches for career, business, performance, fitness & wellness
- 24 product & graphic designers
- 24 software developers & engineers
- and plenty more!
You can check out our highlight interviews here.
Balance the Grind’s new mission is to create a work-life balance publication built on conversations, ideas and community. We want to showcase interesting stories from people from all over the world, in different careers and lifestyles, on how they balance the grind in their unique way.
What’s next for Balance the Grind?
Conversations about work, life and balance will always be the focal point of this website. But we also want to keep expanding out to related topics, including:
- How your physical workspace affects your creativity – we recently launched Workflow, an interview series about people’s working styles and workspaces. I’m particularly interested in workspace design and how it can shape your creativity and productivity.
- Company cultures – working for a company with a strong work-life balance culture can have a huge impact on your mental and physical health. That’s why we’ve started collaborating with companies to showcase their culture and how they approach work-life balance for employees.
- Company profiles – we’re big admirers of companies like Automattic, Basecamp and Buffer, so I’d like to write more profiles on how they developed their culture while maintaining a distributed working style.
- Lessons Learnt – this is more of a personal project for me to get back in the habit of writing every day. Every Friday I’ll be publishing a new profile on an individual (or brand) that has inspired me. So far I’ve written about: Nipsey Hussle, Jason Fried, Andrew Wilkinson and Floyd Mayweather.
- Monetisation – this year I’m going to focused on monetising Balance the Grind. We’ll be reaching out to companies with a similar passion and/or can provide value to our audience in the work-life balance space. You probably would have already seen affiliate links for companies like Shopify, Canva, Webflow and a few others.
Some last words for this wrap. After interviewing over 600 people, I’ve learnt that no-one has “achieved” work-life balance. Everyone I’ve spoken to: entrepreneurs, artists, business executives, independent freelancers – they’re all trying to figure out their own way of balancing it all, that makes sense to their life.
So if you ever feel like you’re “doing it wrong,” just remember that balance is a dynamic, constantly-shifting concept, and is whatever works for you, at that particular moment in your life.
Before you go…
If you’d like to sponsor or advertise with Balance the Grind, let’s talk here.
If you’d like to have a conversation with us about how you balance the grind, get in touch with us.
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