Having spent much of my working life around type A personalities who pour all their effort into their careers and have little in the way of personal lives, I’ve always respected those who sacrifice some career advancement to get life balance. This doesn’t include just high-powered business executives; I’ve seen it in a mechanic as well. The way we pay for car repairs usually involves book hours instead of real hours. A book lists the number of hours each type of repair is supposed to take. Then you pay for this number of hours no matter how long the repair takes. Mechanics vary greatly in how long they take to complete repairs. A former mechanic friend (I’ll call Dan) used to routinely take less than half the book hours to complete his work, but he says that he worked with some mechanics who would spend all day on a 2-hour job. Dan was well-liked by his employer because he made maximum use of the space he took up in the garage (i.e., he made them lots of money). And he was ...