For Many Entrepreneurs and Managers, Life Balance is a Luxury

Author: Donatella Pauković

April 6, 2025

Since the pandemic years, when many people became concerned about their health and realized its importance, the business community has been buzzing about the infamous balance between two supposedly separate segments of life – the private one, which relates to family, friends, hobbies, and pleasures, and the business one, which concerns everything related to career. To prevent employees from leaving for another company, which is possible in today’s job market, employers strive to provide the greatest possible private-business equilibrium.

But has anyone asked them – the founders and directors of companies – if they have any free time left while managing the business and caring for employees?

Ideas Have No Schedule

Often, there is no one who can take over the work if the employer is sick or on vacation, so balancing private and business life is always a significant challenge for every small entrepreneur, emphasizes Davor Aničić, founder and director of the IT company Velebit AI.

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—– Legal and business deadlines do not ask whether it is the weekend or not, and relatively simple administrative obligations often suddenly become multi-day unpaid projects. The modern online age has brought a new era of business communication in which a quick response is expected. Jobs are done with clients or colleagues who are in different time zones, and the dependence of business on an increasing number of IT service providers sometimes means that you will have an emergency situation in the middle of the night due to events on the other side of the globe – explains Aničić, who therefore cannot afford a day off with his phone turned off, but does not perceive it as catastrophic.

When you do a job out of love and curiosity, it is hard to truly turn off your brain, notes Nina Išek Međugorac, executive director of the public relations agency Val grupa.

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—– Ideas do not respect schedules; they come when you do not call them. But I am learning to create conditions to ‘disappear’ when I need to because that way I build a culture in which others can do the same. My day off is not a luxury, but an indicator of how well we have organized the team. In an agency where everyone knows their role, where trust prevails, and the system works, a day off is not a threat, but a sign of the organization’s health – believes Išek Međugorac, adding that it helps her that she trusts the people she works with and that they have built a system that does not depend on one person.

What do other entrepreneurs say about this balance, and what do experts think? Why do some of them consider the story about balance just a cliché, and what is the entrepreneurs’ opinion on the trend of a four-day workweek? Find out in the new Lider.

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