A study conducted by the Harvard Business Review found that good work life balance was a strong predictor of overall happiness and well-being. It’s not a guarantee, but you’re headed in the right direction.
Part of achieving this work life balance is being in the right career. Some are just better suited to let you live your life than others.
Digital marketing is one of the best if you want a good work life balance. Its high wages, flexible hours, and relatively low barrier to entry make it a great choice for a wide range of people.
Let’s talk about work life balance and why digital marketing careers make it so easy to live well.
What is Work Life Balance?
Like many things, there really isn’t one definition for work life balance. It sort of depends on you. However, for most, good work life balance means having a job that is fulfilling and rewarding, both personally and financially, but that doesn’t entirely consume your life.
It provides you with enough money and free time to be able to tend to other responsibilities, such as being a parent, son, friend, soccer coach, etc., and to enjoy your hobbies and passions, whatever those may be.
For those who manage to land a job directly aligned with their passions and calling, the balance might look a bit different than the one achieved by people who work a job to support a hobby that doesn’t pay them.
Either way, when you experience this balance, you know it. Things seem to click, stress levels go down, and things that usually seem hard, like going to work every day, seem a little easier.
In other words, you’re a happier person, which will radiate out into the rest of your life and make your time on this earth that much better.
Characteristics of Jobs That Provide Good Work Life Balance
Theoretically, any job can allow for good work life balance. This is because the job itself doesn’t create the balance. It’s your approach and attitude.
However, there are some characteristics that are commonly found in careers that more easily allow for a better work life balance.
Number of Hours
The more time you spend at work, the less time you will have for your personal life. If work is truly your passion, then longer hours may be your path to balance. But for most, having time outside of work is crucial to achieving a good balance.
Today, a “full-time” job is 40 hours a week. For some, this is still too many, and so a “part-time” arrangement is better. For others, you might want to work more so that you can earn more money and then take big vacations every few months that you wouldn’t be able to do working a more traditional job.
Either way, as you start your job search, think about how much time you want to dedicate to work, and think about the extra stuff such as your commute. Then, subtract those hours from the day and ask yourself if what’s left is enough for you to do the other things that make you happy.
Flexible Working Hours
Perhaps even more important than the number of hours you work in a week is when you need to work those hours. If you need to be in an office from 8am to 5pm Monday – Friday, that can often make it hard for you to still have time to do the things you want to do.
Say you love hiking and climbing. Sure, you can do those on the weekends, but you also have the rest of your life to tend to. You can block off one day, but if the weather is bad on that day, your plan is shot and it’s easy to feel like your job is getting in the way of you living your life.
Flexible scheduling means you can more or less set your own work hours. It’s rare you can do this 100 percent, but a lot of jobs these days work off deadlines.
As long as you get your work in on time, you’re free to do it when it suits you best. So if you wake up on Tuesday and that blue sky is calling you to the mountains, you can go for it and then put some time in later when you’re back home and you’ve already done something fun for the day.
While you might have some times throughout the week when you need to be at work, maybe for a meeting or training, the less strict your schedule is, the easier it will be for you to find that work life balance that leads to happiness.
Good Pay
Let’s start by saying: you do not need to be rich to find balance and be happy.
But you do need enough to cover your expenses, save for the future, and also spend on the things you enjoy. What that number is will depend on you and your situation, but as you look for jobs and seek balance, do not settle for less than what you need in favor of a flexible schedule of some other perk.
Without financial security, it’s almost impossible to find balance.
Disconnection/Time Away
To truly achieve balance, you need to find a way to leave work at work and focus your energy outside of your job on things that bring you joy. Jobs that offer generous paid time off packages are obviously a good place to start, but culture can be just as important.
Look for places that respect your time off. If it’s normal for people to email, instant message, and text to your personal phone when you don’t respond right away, that can make it really hard for you to get work out of your brain and focus on whatever else you’re doing.
Jobs that you do entirely online work well for this because you can turn off notifications, silence your phone, or even leave it at home (true if you have a special work phone).
Also, it’s important to have responsibility, but know that the more you take on, the more difficult it will be to disconnect. Think of healthcare professions. Doctors are often on-call even when they’re not at work, and this can seriously limit their ability to disconnect and make it more difficult to achieve a work life balance.
Meaning and Purpose
Part of achieving and maintaining work life balance is finding work that provides you with some sense of meaning and purpose.
You don’t necessarily need to LOVE your job, but feeling like you matter and are doing something worth your time eases the burden of being at work and will help you adopt a better attitude in the rest of your life.
Working a meaningless job that you hate is likely to make you depressed, which will make it hard for you to summon the motivation to do the things you love outside of work. That’s no way to achieve balance.
Work From Home
When seeking a better work life balance, it’s normal to jump right to remote work jobs you can do from home. People envision themselves sitting in their pajamas working on the front porch and say “ah, that’s happiness.”
Often, working from home does make it easier to balance work and your personal life, but it’s not always a guarantee.
For example, if your remote job has strict hours requirements, what’s the difference between sitting at a computer from 8-5 every day at your house or at an office?
Remote work makes balance easier because you can save time, money, and stress on a commute, and also potentially spend more time with your family. For example, working from home is a great job for stay-at-home mom’s looking to balance being a mother with being a professional or digital nomads who want to travel the world.
But it’s not for everyone. If you just moved to a new city and don’t know anyone, working from home can be isolating. Or it can free you up to go out and meet people. It depends on the person.
All in all, most people do find it’s easier to balance work and life working from home. It’s just important to not think of this as a guarantee.
Best Jobs for Work Life Balance
Below are a list of high-paying jobs that typically come with the type of working conditions needed to achieve true work life balance.
Digital Marketing: High Paying Jobs with Great Balance
Some of the best jobs for finding a good work life balance are found within the field of digital marketing.
If you’re unfamiliar, digital marketing is all about connecting businesses and other organizations with their various audiences using digital platforms, such as search engines, social media, ads, etc.
The reason digital marketing stands out as such a great opportunity for those looking to build balance is that it hits on many of the points mentioned above.
Almost all digital marketing jobs are remote, and a great many of them allow you to choose your own hours. Because digital marketing takes place online, teams are spread out across the globe and employees are often given the chance to set their own schedules and work based primarily deadlines.
Equally as important, digital marketing has a ton of high paying jobs available. It is a growing field that is in high demand. This is because businesses need to use digital marketing to succeed in this digital world, and this makes them willing to pay for talent.
However, despite being so in demand and lucrative, there is a relatively low barrier to entry. You DO NOT need a college degree, and you can often land a high paying job with little to no prior experience. Some training is necessary, but you can get that through training programs such as the Digital Career Blueprint.
This free masterclass will walk you through everything you need to know to get started in digital marketing and will make it clear why this is such a great choice if you want balance in your life.
In the meantime, here are some specific jobs you can do.
PPC Analyst/Specialist
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Advertises (companies) pay ad platforms, such as Google or Meta, to display ads on websites, search engines, social media, and more. However, the catch is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ads.
Getting someone to click is half the battle. You need to have a powerful message that connects with people, and you also need to display it in the right spot. But you also need to be sure the people clicking belong to the right target market. You don’t want people clicking who don’t turn into customers clicking on your ads, as this is just a waste of money.
As a PPC specialist, your job could include a number of different aspects of this process. You could be designing the ads, researching placement opportunities, analyzing costs, creating partnerships, and more. For those who like puzzles and also like doing something different every day, this can be a really fun job.
The vast majority of PPC jobs are remote, flexible, and high-paying. It’s not uncommon to start off making $50,000 – $60,000 a year with no prior experience and no college degree. After some time, PPC specialist can become PPC project managers and earn even more money.
This combination of flexible scheduling, challenge and reward, and financial incentive gives PPC specialists the chance to live their own lives outside of work and enjoy a really healthy work life balance.
SEO Analyst/Specialist
Another route you could go in the world of digital marketing that also offers high paying jobs that are rewarding and flexible is search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines have become the home page of the internet and are where most people start their journey when researching anything, whether it’s a product to buy or a place to go on vacation.
Therefore, for companies and organizations, appearing at or near the top of search results for relevant keywords is an incredible opportunity to connect with target markets and make sales.
However, getting to the top of those results is easier said than done and has spawned an entire industry. You need great content, traffic from multiple sources, a well-designed strategy, community support through links, a well-designed web page, and, perhaps most importantly, a willingness to adjust on a dime.
As an SEO Analyst/Specialist, you would likely be involved in all aspects of SEO. This could mean doing keyword research, analyzing the competition, reaching out to partners and other sites to build links, writing content, and so much more. And you’d be doing it in an entirely remote, completely flexible environment where there is a LOT of money to be made.
If you want a good work life balance and enjoy the challenge of working in a constantly-changing environment, then definitely look out for jobs as an SEO specialist/analyst.
Content Creator (Writer/Graphic Designer)
Digital marketing runs on content, whether it’s written, audio, or visual. It’s how companies connect with their audiences and encourage them to take action. Therefore, if you have a knack for creating content, this can be an excellent route to go. Websites are almost always looking for new writers or graphic designers to help them level up their content and get ahead of the competition.
Most of these jobs are deadlined based and contracted, which is kind of like having your own business. and means means you can set your own schedule. If you want to work at 2am, that’s fine, so long as the work is done in time.
Plus, with contract work, you can load up your schedule during certain times of the year, and then when you’re finished, you can head off and do what you want, like travel to another continent. Or you could even just take your laptop with you and work as you go.
The only real downside to content creation is that it can take some time to make yourself known. There are a lot of people out there who say they can write, but employers usually want to see some proof before they hire you. But once you get rolling, you will find that these jobs are plentiful, and when you start proving to people you’re worth it, they can quickly become a high-paying job.
Real Estate Agent
If digital marketing doesn’t sound like your thing, you could seek your work life balance in real estate. Realtors, aka real estate agents, help people buy and sell homes. They work on commission and often have the freedom to take on as many or as few clients as they would like.
Once you get established, the money can be really, really good. Successful realtors often take on higher-priced homes and just by selling a few each year they can make enough to live and then some. And since they only have a handful of clients, they have tons of freedom to set their own schedules and balance out their lives.
The problem with this career is that it’s really hard to get to this point. First, you need to obtain your license, and then when you first start out, no one knows who you are and it can be tough to land clients.
This can turn into a situation where you are working a ton and not making very much money, which is the opposite of a work life balance.
Digital marketing offers a much quicker return on investment and makes it much easier to achieve the balance you want.
Web Developer
Building and maintaining websites can be an extremely lucrative job because having a good website is essential for any company or organization to succeed.
In these positions, work life balance is often achieved through sprints. You take on a client, build a website as fast as you can, get paid, and then take a long break to do something else. You could also charge these clients a retainer and be available to them when things go wrong. A good, on-call developer is like gold to most companies, and this can be a great way to make good money without having to commit too much time.
The big tradeoff here and why digital marketing is the better option is the barrier to entry.
Learning how to code and build websites in a way that impresses clients and allows you to charge high fees is extremely difficult and can take years. With digital marketing, you can start working in a couple of weeks once you have the right training.
Teacher
Teachers can have a good work life balance because their work schedules have a built-in 2+ month holiday in the summer. This can be an incredible opportunity for you to spend time on your hobbies, travel, or just relax.
But, please, do not go become a teacher just for the summer holidays.
It’s a tough job the other 10 months of the year and can take a lot out of you if you don’t absolutely love it. It also requires a college degree.
However, if working in schools appeals to you, it can be one of the most rewarding jobs out there, and it’s one of the few that offers this kind of time off in the summer.
Data Scientist
If you’re a numbers person, then consider a job as a data scientist. These professionals are responsible for collecting and analyzing data and using it to come up with conclusions that are useful for the business or organization for which they work.
The work life balance comes from the fact that data can be accessed at any time and from any place. You rarely need to be in a physical location to crunch the numbers and send off your analysis.
However, this job can be very boring if you don’t love this type of work, and it’s not nearly as in demand as careers in digital marketing. Before you decide you want to be a data scientist, consider looking elsewhere first.
Get Started In Digital Marketing and Find Your Balance
If balance is what you seek, then digital marketing is likely going to be your path. As an in-demand and growing field, there are tons of high-paying jobs that offer flexible working hours and remote work, which makes work life balance more possible than in any other field.
Plus, you can find these jobs without a college degree and without any previous training.
To get your digital marketing career started, check out this free masterclass to learn the basics you need to succeed and achieve that cherished work life balance.
