Today is my birthday.
And rather than spending another Friday talking about payments, fintech, disruption, or the next big industry innovation, I want to talk about something much more personal.
Time.
More specifically, how we spend it, what we sacrifice to get more of what we think we need, and whether we've confused professional success with living a successful life.
I've spent more than three decades building businesses, pursuing opportunities, working through challenges, and chasing ideas that I believed could become something meaningful.
I've worked long nights, weekends, holidays, and more hours than I could ever begin to count.
And I genuinely love what I do.
But here's the uncomfortable truth I've been reflecting on.
I don't get more personal fulfillment from working another evening than I do from playing games with my family. Yet somehow, I consistently find myself spending more time working.
Why?
That's the question I want to explore today.
We've Built a Culture That Celebrates Being Busy
In America, hard work is practically a national identity.
We're taught from an early age that if we work hard enough, stay committed, make sacrifices, and keep pushing, success will follow.
And there's a tremendous amount of truth in that philosophy.
Hard work has created opportunities, built industries, supported families, and changed lives.
I'm a product of that mindset.
But somewhere along the way, I wonder whether we crossed a line.
We stopped treating hard work as a means to achieve something and started treating it as an achievement in itself.
We celebrate 60-hour workweeks.
We admire entrepreneurs who never take a day off.
We wear exhaustion like a badge of honor.
And when someone tells us they're incredibly busy, we almost instinctively interpret it as evidence that they're important, successful, or doing something meaningful.
But when did being busy become synonymous with being successful?
The Rest of the World Might Be Teaching Us Something
I started looking at how much people work in different parts of the world.
According to OECD data for 2024, the average American worker put in approximately 1,796 hours.
Compare that with Germany at 1,334, Denmark at 1,372, France at 1,509, and Australia at 1,627.
Those are meaningful differences.
A German worker, on average, logged roughly 462 fewer hours than an American worker.
That's the equivalent of more than eleven 40-hour workweeks.
Now, before we romanticize the rest of the world, the picture is more complicated.
Workers in Colombia averaged approximately 2,219 hours, Mexico 2,215, Chile 1,919, and Costa Rica 2,149.
Long hours are not uniquely American. In many countries, economic necessity, labor-market conditions, and lower hourly productivity contribute to longer working years.
And OECD methodologies aren't perfectly comparable across countries.
But the international differences still raise a fascinating question.
If some of the world's most advanced economies can remain highly productive while working significantly fewer hours, why do we continue to equate more hours with more success?
Are We Actually More Productive?
This is where the conversation gets interesting.
Productivity isn't measured by how long someone sits at a desk.
It's measured by what gets accomplished with the resources and time available.
The OECD's research shows that several European economies achieve high levels of economic output per hour worked despite having shorter average working years.
The United States itself remains a highly productive economy, so this isn't an argument that Americans are inefficient.
It's a challenge to the assumption that more hours automatically create better outcomes.
How many meetings have we attended that accomplished absolutely nothing?
How many hours have we spent responding to emails that could have waited?
How often do we continue working simply because there's always another task, another opportunity, another problem, or another goal?
And now, with artificial intelligence fundamentally changing how work gets done, shouldn't we be asking whether greater efficiency can give us back some of our lives?
Or are we simply going to use every hour AI saves us to create more work?
Why Do We Always Want More?
This is the part that hits closest to home.
More revenue.
More customers.
More opportunities.
More money.
A bigger house.
A nicer car.
Another business.
Another achievement.
I've spent much of my professional life pursuing more.
And I'm not suggesting ambition is bad. Ambition has fueled some of the greatest experiences of my life.
But I wonder how often we stop and ask ourselves a deceptively simple question.
How much is enough?
At what point do we have enough financial security?
Enough professional recognition?
Enough possessions?
Enough accomplishments?
And if we don't know what enough looks like, how will we ever recognize when we've arrived?
Perhaps the problem isn't that we want too much.
Perhaps it's that we've never taken the time to define what we're actually working toward.
The Boundaries We Refuse to Set
It's easy to blame employers, customers, demanding schedules, or the pressures of running a business.
And those pressures are real. Not everyone has the financial security or control over their schedule to simply work fewer hours.
But for those of us who do have some control, I believe we also have to accept personal responsibility.
I'm particularly guilty of this.
I can establish boundaries for employees.
I can build operating plans, set financial targets, manage competing priorities, and hold teams accountable.
But when it comes to protecting my own personal time?
I frequently break the very rules I should be setting for myself.
One more email.
One more call.
One more proposal.
One more hour.
And before I know it, another evening is gone.
The irony is that the things I value most don't necessarily require more money.
A game night with my family.
Time with people I love.
Working on something creative with my hands.
Listening to music.
A spontaneous adventure.
An afternoon without an agenda.
Those experiences fill something that another business achievement simply doesn't.
Yet I find myself repeatedly prioritizing work over the very things that bring me the most fulfillment.
And I suspect I'm not alone.
Maybe Work-Life Balance Is the Wrong Goal
I've never particularly liked the idea that work and life must exist in perfect balance.
There are seasons when building something important requires tremendous effort.
There are times when our families need more from us.
There are financial realities, responsibilities, and commitments that can't simply be ignored.
Life isn't always going to divide neatly into equal parts.
But perhaps balance isn't about equal hours.
Perhaps it's about making sure the things that matter most aren't consistently receiving whatever time is left over.
Maybe it's about being more intentional.
Protecting time for the people we love with the same discipline we use to protect important business meetings.
Learning to say no to opportunities that don't meaningfully improve our lives.
Recognizing that being available to everyone all the time is not the same as being effective.
And understanding that the next dollar earned isn't always worth the hour sacrificed.
The Birthday Question
Birthdays have a funny way of making us reflect.
Another year older.
Another year of experiences.
Another year of opportunities, accomplishments, disappointments, lessons, and memories.
But there's one thing we never get more of.
Time.
We can make more money.
We can build another business.
We can find another opportunity.
We can recover from professional setbacks.
But we cannot earn back the evenings, weekends, birthdays, and ordinary moments we chose to spend somewhere else.
And that realization has me asking whether I've always been measuring success correctly.
I still have enormous ambition.
I still want to build, innovate, create, and contribute.
I don't expect that part of me to change.
But I do want to become better at recognizing when enough is enough.
Because the people and experiences that make life meaningful shouldn't have to compete with an endless to-do list.
My Verdict: Declined.
The idea that working harder, longer, and sacrificing more of our personal lives is the ultimate measure of success?
DECLINED.
Hard work matters.
Ambition matters.
Building something meaningful matters.
But so does living.
And if our professional success consistently comes at the expense of the relationships, experiences, and passions that give our lives meaning, perhaps we need to reconsider what success actually looks like.
Today, on my birthday, I'm challenging myself to become more intentional about that.
Not to stop working hard.
Not to abandon ambition.
But to stop automatically giving work the first claim on my time.
Because maybe the greatest achievement isn't building a successful career.
Maybe it's building a life we don't constantly need a vacation from.
Now It's Your Turn
I want to hear from the entrepreneurs, executives, employees, founders, parents, and professionals in my network.
Are we working to live, or living to work?
Do you believe working more hours actually makes us more successful?
Have you figured out how to establish boundaries that protect what matters most?
Or, like me, do you sometimes find yourself sacrificing the very things you're working so hard to enjoy?
APPROVED: Hard work and sacrifice are necessary ingredients for extraordinary success.
DECLINED: We've glorified overworking and confused being busy with being productive.
IT DEPENDS: Success requires different sacrifices at different stages of life.
I don't think there's one perfect answer.
But I do think it's a conversation worth having.
Especially on a birthday.
Noah Fitzgerald, CPP
Approved. Declined. — The Friday Conversation
Sources and context: OECD, Average Annual Hours Actually Worked per Worker (2024); OECD Compendium of Productivity Indicators 2026; OECD, GDP per Hour Worked. Annual hours include full-time and part-time workers, employees and self-employed people. Cross-country differences should be interpreted cautiously because methods and labor-market composition differ.