Taking Care of Your Work-Life Balance

Welcome again to the Product Bakery. I'm Christian and as always here with my co-host Alex. Hey, Alex. Hi. I see you sitting in a meeting room today. That's a different view. And it's probably the last time for the next couple of days that you will see me sitting in a meeting room because I'm going on vacation. Damn it. This guy is making more vacation than he's actually working. That's not true. Ah, come on. Honestly, I even have meetings scheduled for the time on my vacation and I'm just hoping that my internet won't work well enough on the sailing boat. Why are you accepting at all? I don't know. Sometimes you have to, right? Is that the case really? Well, I'm currently on a mission to rebrand Moonfair and we're currently in the RFP cycle with agencies and I wouldn't want to delay it for another two weeks to get the presentation scheduled. So I can't afford one and a half hours of my vacation to actually see some creative stuff. It's also something that I like to see. Interesting. I know you wouldn't do it. That's not true. I would, but I'm also in a different working mode than you, right? I'm also self-employed, but I was just recently talking to a product manager and he's working in product since, I don't know, eight or nine years. And we were talking about work-life balance a little bit and also making sure that you don't overwork yourself, which can happen very fast. And I just told him that one of the biggest learnings I've made is there were so many meetings that I attended late after finishing work, many meetings that I thought I need to attend during vacations, et cetera. And when I now look back, if I wouldn't have attended, it would have worked as well. And he just confirmed that and I was just curious. So what should I say? It's like half past seven and I'm in a meeting with you. You son of a bitch. You're screwing up my work-life balance. That's a side project we both committed to. No, yeah, I agree. But I think it's, yes, I think work-life balance is an important topic. We should talk about it. I think one thing, because I feel guilty of whenever I hear work-life balance, because I have a lot of people who tell me, Oh, Alex, you work too much, blah, blah, blah, like friends and so on, because a lot of people take it really seriously. At the same time, I have to say for me personally, and then we can go into the topic of like work-life balance. But for me personally, if there is something that I'm interested in, I love doing it long hours, late, or even on vacation, because of the satisfaction that it gives me afterwards. There are certain things that give me such positive energy, because I know that I did it and I'm happy with the end result, that I love doing it. And actually not having that result would bother me much more personally. And I think it comes a little bit down to the fact that I really like what I'm doing. And I had different times. And I mean, you've seen a lot of my also professional years. And I think like whenever I didn't like what I was doing, then work-life balance has been a super important topic and something that I really had to prioritize, where I had to shut down my computer and so on. Are you talking about cuddling with your pets or about work? I don't have pets. Oh, sometimes you do. Yeah, sometimes I rent them. No, I agree with you. And that's also something, it's easier said than maybe executed, but the goal should be to not have vacation, to not do any more what you usually do, right? It's okay to have vacation and sometimes also do what you love. But the moment you say to yourself, I need to get rid of it. I can't see, I can't stand it anymore. It's a clear sign that something is going to the wrong direction, I believe. And something I've learned also is still, no matter how important you are within an organization, within a company, usually if you're not there, the company will still continue existing. Of course. And I used to make that mistake by believing that I am the absolute bottleneck and I need to be there and I need to make that decision and I need to know what's going on. Yeah. And after three weeks of vacation, I came back and I realized, work without me. I'm not as cool as I thought. To some extent, we're also slightly responsible for it. If I just think of what I said at the beginning of the call, sometimes you also need to let go. Now, rebranding topic, right? It's really something where I feel super strong about it. That's why I also don't want to let go and fully miss the decision because it gives me also so much satisfaction. But yeah, obviously, if you have too many of these things where you feel like you need to be in control and you don't manage to be able to let go and delegate and to give it to other people, well, then you're also probably close to your burnout. And it's not only connected to work, in my opinion, it's also connected to the interactions with people you have. Because sometimes you had a fight with someone, sometimes your boss is pissing you off or whatever. But as you said, it's also important to let things sometimes just go. Never fight with my boss. Just in case, if he's listening, Lawrence, hi. Peace. I'm not stealing toilet paper anymore. I shouldn't have said that, Alex, right? iPads, computers, webcams. Work-life balance, right? Yeah. Are you taking care that your employees are having a balanced life and taking enough vacation? Trying to. Jokes apart. It's definitely something, yeah, where you need to be able to don't take those things home. And ideally also where you should try to resolve them on the spot. I think whatever fight you might have or whatever thing there is where you might disagree, you should talk about it. You should try to solve these things. You should sort them out to some extent, right? Because otherwise, it's also very hard to switch off and to completely forget about these things. And no matter in which position you are, if you know you're going to be on vacation in one week or in two weeks, make sure you prepare for it. Make sure you delegate the work and don't try to solve everything by yourself because usually that goes wrong. Tell people in advance, block your calendar, make sure nobody can book you meetings in during that period of time. Start declining already a couple of meetings that you usually attend that they just get used to it. I usually do vacation, also decline existing and upcoming meetings. Yeah, but even before you go on vacation. So if it's your last week, I'm always like, oh, that stakeholder meeting? Oh, no, not today. Yeah, I do that even if I'm not on vacation. Good role model, Alex. Good role model. You need to learn to say no. You need to learn to say no. You should say no. Actually, I think another, again, I always feel like guilty and I always feel like I have the fingers pointed. I'm probably also not the best person to talk about like work-life balance. Because especially when you work with other people, things like this one meeting that I'm going to take on a vacation. In theory, you shouldn't even do it to not make other people feel like that they should. You know, it's like even thinking of the team, like usually I try to tell people when I see them working late in the office, go home. Everything can, there is nothing that can't wait until tomorrow. And let's be honest, we're not working on like a heart surgery. We're building products. We're not saving the world, unfortunately. We sometimes wish we would, but we don't. Yeah, that's something my girlfriend always reminds me of when I'm stressed and working too much. And it's true. So I think to some extent, you also need to role model those things. And I also try to usually don't make these things seem like normal or obvious or expected. Right? I think from what I'm hearing, I believe your girlfriend is a much better leader than you are. But that's a different topic. You need to ask my team. So before you move on, before you go on vacation, make sure you prepare mentally and also work wise for it. Because otherwise, it might be more stressful than relaxing. It will for sure be relaxing. But at the same time, if you travel with seven other people, most of them close friends, it's also not going to be too relaxing. Fair point. So with that said, I believe once we're going to launch this episode, you are already back from vacation. However, I wish you all the best, Alex. Talking to you soon. See you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai