Introduction

Over the past several years I’ve had the privilege of writing code for some seriously amazing companies. Usually, the unspoken mindset was that you were supposed to work until the task was done or that more hours meant more code (good or bad). The thought was by focusing on the tasks and the work, we would inevitably achieve our goals and everyone would be happy. I remember working some really long weeks hitting the work goal, but not feeling very happy. It would be a constant battle to find balance

But here’s the challenge for all of those who can relate:

Go for work-life awesome not work-life balance.

This is the idea that you can actually have a job that you are genuinely passionate about and you can live out what you love to do in all aspects of your life.

The great deception is that work and life should be two separate and sterile boxes that need to be measured and weighed by unreachable time-lines and responsibility. This is deceiving because somehow we are convinced that we can’t have a job that comes from what we do in life. The sad reality of attempting to serve two separate masters will result in pulling us away from one or the other.

The fact is that our work skills and the rest of our lives are not hot and cold faucets. Instead of becoming frustrated at trying to compartmentalize, we should think about making our lives more congruent. Work skills and talents should not be one-dimensional, but can be thought of as two sides of Velcro that fit together snugly.

With a different mindset, your life can be hitting “work-life awesome.” People have attempted to establish balance by completely separating the two, but consider your talents, creativity and passions as a sum rather than a quotient of personal plus work happiness.

Here’s the secret: If you find something that you are genuinely excited about and you are fortunate enough to do it as a “job,” how awesome would it be to share that passion with your family and friends? It seems logical but we find ourselves returning to the act of trying to peel the two apart again.

I’ve been writing code for a long time, but it wasn’t until more recently, when I joined New Relic, I began to realize that my work is more than part of my life that should be turned off when I left a building. This revelation sprung from New Relic’s culture: a place of doers who care tremendously about what they do; a place where every moment is deemed important, not just at work but everywhere; a place where really cool engineering stuff begins at the top and at the bottom; where they’d rather have you over the long run then burn you out early in exchange for some code; a place where family comes first.

Working at New Relic has been challenging and awesome all at the same time, but it has never been work for me. I previously accepted the belief that work always had to be work (which was often frustrating) and that life was the escape from being frustrated at work. But I had it backwards:

Life is awesome when this thing called “work” becomes another way of expressing the passions in your life.

This book is about finding and expressing what each of us were created to do. You will not find a 12 step approach or some gimmick to be the better you in 10 days. So what is the intent of this book?

The intent of this book is to:

• Help you find the refactoring or “reworking” mindset for your life
• Motivate you toward finding a place that fits your passions
• Help answer that question that has been a constant hum in the back of your mind… “So now what?”
• Start a discussion so that we can all get “better” (not perfect) at this whole work-life thing.

Which means this book is:

• Based on a collection of real world experience from many people
• Intentionally filled with satire and fun to help us all take ourselves a little less seriously
• Filled with Nerd and Geek culture references to illustrate our need for refactoring
• Designed to speak to anyone who is passionate about doing what they love but feel like they can’t
• Filled with projects that you can do with your family and friends
• Intended to generate thinking and discussion over what this whole work-life thing is supposed to be.

This book is NOT:

• A self-help book
• Intended to be read but never shared
• Just for “computer” nerds but rather for all nerd-kind

Your time is precious. You’re taking time to read this work right now (of which I am grateful) instead of spending that time on other things like playing with the kids, “capturing the flag” in Halo, planting a garden or making your next exhibit for the Maker Faire. Whatever the case, you are here so THANK YOU. I have six amazing kids and a beautiful wife, so time and the optimization of getting things done (while having loads of fun) is paramount to me. My hope for you is that the words on the following pages will be valuable to you. Between the over-the-top jokes, histrionic illustrations, smattering of geek/nerd references and all of the stories my desire is that you’ll end up finding what I eventually did: WORK-LIFE AWESOME.