Lessons in work-life balance from the war zone: If no one is dead or dying, go home.
If you work in an office, a retail store, a coffee shop, at home--this probably seems like a dramatic bit of work-life balance advice. It may resonate more with those of you who work in more precarious settings (e.g., emergency services, military). For me, it became my personal mantra during a one-year stint in Afghanistan. Where do you draw the line between routine, urgent, and emergency when life and death scenarios were common and days could easily run 18-20 hours, 7 days a week?
At the end of the day, if no one is dead or dying, go home.
Clarity on the routine, the urgent, and the emergent
I was tethered to a radio that never stopped squawking my call sign. The team I supported needed everything from booze and ammo, to toilet paper, to a helo ride out. At any given time I was managing multiple construction projects around base (building a new bakery, digging a new water well, upgrading our blast walls) with a team of hundreds of local workers. My to-do list in the office was never-ending (sending cables, counting cash, HR, security, etc). Nights were spent on the flight line moving people and supplies by moonlight. There were no days off, no early afternoons, no breaks. Honestly, while it was a grueling schedule, we had some fun too. Hiking the outposts, nights around the fire pit, stealing a moment at the gym. The running joke was, after your tour, you went home either a hunk, a chunk, or a drunk. Depending on your chosen coping mechanisms, you could manage two of the three.
Interspersed with managing a million moving parts from dawn to well beyond dusk, were moments of sheer terror. Exploding mortars lighting up the sky like fireworks in the middle of the day. Gunfire popping off all around. Dead bodies. Dead friends. The balance was knowing when to leave the mundane tasks for tomorrow, take care of your people, and try to rest up for the next round of mayhem. I really came to understand what a true emergency looked like, to prioritize health and safety first, and to make space for myself to breathe and recover.
I took this mantra with me through the rest of my time at the CIA. I shared it with the new recruits I trained and mentored as the one thing to remember before they went off on their first assignment. There's always going to be more work to do. Most of it can wait til tomorrow. Take care of yourself. You can lose yourself trying to do it all, trying to be it all for everyone else. At the end of the day, if no one is dead or dying, go home.
Corporate urgency is mostly BS
I bring a healthy level of skepticism to what's considered "urgent" in the corporate world. I remember breathing a sigh of relief when one of my first managers at AWS told me, "there's no such thing as a communications emergency." She got it. Yes, there are important messages that must be communicated quickly and accurately. Sometimes they even have safety implications. But at the end of the day, no one is going to die if I don't send an email about an organizational change, or the latest product launch, or quarterly promotions. In employee communications specifically, it's actually better not to send an important message at the end of the day as it's more likely to be opened and digested if sent during working hours. There's always more work to do, and if needed, it can literally all wait until tomorrow.
And so these days, I share this philosophy with my team. Family comes first. Block your calendars so we don't schedule meetings while you're trying to pick up your son from school, or feed your daughter. Push back when folks put a 7:00pm brainstorm on your calendar because they don't realize you're in a different time zone. Take your vacations and don't work on them. Let me help you prioritize your projects so you're not overwhelmed with trying to do everything at once. Don't work on the weekend (unless your creative genius strikes and you need to get it on paper).
Set your boundaries early and reinforce them often.
In interviews, when candidates ask for my advice on being successful at Amazon, I say, "Set your boundaries early and reinforce them often." This is the slightly less dramatic version of my personal mantra. It's possible to build amazing things within your 40-hour work week. It's possible to take family vacations, to enjoy holidays unplugged, to take the occasional mental health day AND be successful. Your job will take as much of you as you're willing to give. You have the power to set your own pace and manage expectations.
Connect with me on Insta for work-life balance tips, learn how to align your values, passions, and skills with your career, and lead from a place of joy rather than dread.
