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I never cared about work-life balance.
First because I'm a product of the United States where work reigns supreme.
Second because I grew up wanting to make movies. I knew that meant 14-16 hour workdays and it wasn't gonna leave time for much else.
Having weekend plans? NO THANKS! In college, I spent as many Friday nights as I could on set with my dad watching the crew of Law and Order: Criminal Intent shoot a crime scene on the dark and gritty streets of the Lower East Side.

This all or nothing view of work continued far into my 20s as I followed in my dad's footsteps, moved out to LA and started working in TV. Tech was no better for balance when I switched careers in 2012. If my job workload wasn't hefty enough, I found extracurriculars to fill my time like co-founding a film festival or freelancing on a startup's design. If you're not hustling, you're being hustled, right???
When I became an entrepreneur, this behavior put me in a dangerous place. It's VERY EASY to justify working 24/7 on your own company. But it starts to be a real grind at some point. It's not fun anymore. It's just frustrating. An endless to do list.
I had a wake up call in 2021 when a doctor told me I had created a bunch of health problems for myself by working so much. I needed to make a change.
Soon after that, I found something that would help me make this change: Sunsama.
Sunsama is my daily planning tool. It's improved how I see time. It's improved how I budget time. It's improved how I spend time.
I do want to prioritize some LIFE STUFF now like getting new eyeglasses (hello, progressives!), buying a gift for my dad (happy birthday Pops!) and planning my next trip (Antigua, Guatemala!)
Sunsama helps me balance this alongside work easily.

Inside Sunsama, I have tags for work and personal and then labels for specific themes like this newsletter (#revenue-rulebreaker) and my travel days (#transition-tasks).
Sunsama auto-labels new tasks for me, making it easy to see the split of work + personal. It also estimates how much time it believes each task will take. It gets better over time as I add similar or recurring tasks.

What's powerful about this is that Sunsama reflects back to me:
- My predicted work load at the beginning of the day
- What time I can shut down work based on how much is on the list
- How I ACTUALLY spent my time at the end of the day

These in-my-face reminders of where the time goes help me make room for important stuff like getting to the doctor (something I LOVE to put off). Because the time estimates make it easy to see how personal tasks would impact my work schedule. If I take 2 hours to go to the doctor, I have 4 hours of work to budget and I can just drag those tasks around. Or maybe it's easier to turn it into a personal day. Either way, Sunsama lets me see how the scenarios impact my schedule.
The end result is that I actually do get my work done at a reasonable hour now. I'm writing this at 4:30pm and I'm gonna be done for the day after that, having accomplished what I needed to today.
Past Lex wouldn't know what to do with themself. New Lex knows there's something called LEISURE and is excited to experience that ☀️
Can you relate to overworking yourself into the ground? If so, you should try Sunsama. It will help you use your time better. Try it free for 30 days.
🎲 Lex