AT an office party in 2005, one of my colleagues asked my then husband
what I did on weekends. She knew me as someone with great intensity and
energy. “Does she kayak, go rock climbing and then run a half marathon?”
she joked. No, he answered simply, “she sleeps.” And that was true.
When I wasn’t catching up on work, I spent my weekends recharging my
batteries for the coming week. Work always came first, before my family,
friends and marriage — which ended just a few years later.
In recent weeks I have been following with interest the escalating
debate about work-life balance and the varying positions of Facebook’s
Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo and the academic Anne-Marie Slaughter,
among others. Since I resigned my position as chief financial officer
of Lehman Brothers in 2008, amid mounting chaos and a cloud of public
humiliation only months before the company went bankrupt, I have had
ample time to reflect on the decisions I made in balancing (or failing
to balance) my job with the rest of my life. The fact that I call it
“the rest of my life” gives you an indication where work stood in the
pecking order.
I don’t have children, so it might seem that my story lacks relevance to
the work-life balance debate. Like everyone, though, I did have
relationships — a spouse, friends and family — and none of them got the
best version of me. They got what was left over.
I didn’t start out with the goal of devoting all of myself to my job. It
crept in over time. Each year that went by, slight modifications became
the new normal. First I spent a half-hour on Sunday organizing my
e-mail, to-do list and calendar to make Monday morning easier. Then I
was working a few hours on Sunday, then all day. My boundaries slipped
away until work was all that was left.
Inevitably, when I left my job, it devastated me. I couldn’t just rally
and move on. I did not know how to value who I was versus what I did.
What I did was who I was.
I have spent several years now living a different version of my life,
where I try to apply my energy to my new husband, Anthony, and the
people whom I love and care about. But I can’t make up for lost time.
Most important, although I now have stepchildren, I missed having a
child of my own. I am 47 years old, and Anthony and I have been trying
in vitro fertilization for several years. We are still hoping.
Sometimes young women tell me they admire what I’ve done. As they see
it, I worked hard for 20 years and can now spend the next 20 focused on
other things. But that is not balance. I do not wish that for anyone.
Even at the best times in my career, I was never deluded into thinking I
had achieved any sort of rational allocation between my life at work
and my life outside.
I have often wondered whether I would have been asked to be C.F.O. if I
had not worked the way that I did. Until recently, I thought my singular
focus on my career was the most powerful ingredient in my success. But I
am beginning to realize that I sold myself short. I was talented,
intelligent and energetic. It didn’t have to be so extreme. Besides,
there were diminishing returns to that kind of labor.
I didn’t have to be on my BlackBerry from my first moment in the morning
to my last moment at night. I didn’t have to eat the majority of my
meals at my desk. I didn’t have to fly overnight to a meeting in Europe
on my birthday. I now believe that I could have made it to a similar
place with at least some better version of a personal life. Not without
sacrifice — I don’t think I could have “had it all” — but with somewhat
more harmony.
I have also wondered where I would be today if Lehman Brothers hadn’t
collapsed. In 2007, I did start to have my doubts about the way I was
living my life. Or not really living it. But I felt locked in to my
career. I had just been asked to be C.F.O. I had a responsibility.
Without the crisis, I may never have been strong enough to step away.
Perhaps I needed what felt at the time like some of the worst
experiences in my life to come to a place where I could be grateful for
the life I had. I had to learn to begin to appreciate what was left.
At the end of the day, that is the best guidance I can give. Whatever
valuable advice I have about managing a career, I am only now learning
how to manage a life.
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