My Ten Rules For Work-Life Balance

I famously have no work-life balance. I run an international org that has thousands of volunteers around the globe and over twenty-five teams from video editing to engineering to mental health. We have community outreach efforts in countries from Nigeria to Colombia, we're working on new partnerships every week, and we're launching a secret project that I suspect you as a reader of my work will especially like--stay tuned for this summer. (Spoilers: it's an international magazine.)

To keep it all running, I work over twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I wake up at 7:00 am on Sunday, my body screaming and my head pounding, to make one of my favorite meetings with people around the globe. It's right before my Japanese colleague goes to bed, late night for India, afternoon for Europe, and bloody torture for me. Leading the org means that there is no concept of off-time, a sane schedule, or the ability to say no.

Then there’s the fact that I work with my family. I’d love to take an afternoon off to play board games with my sister and my husband like we used to do, but there’s no way for both Executive Directors and the President to be unresponsive for 10 hours. When we eat dinner, we talk about work. When I’m bed with my husband at night, we talk about work.

On top of my work at Dweebs Global, I have creative projects, am an agented and published author with multiple writing deadlines, run social media accounts (or am trying to), and am dealing with a bunch of different family health crises. Plus it's tax season.

So these rules are how I literally save what’s left of my sanity and my life:

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My 10 Rules for Work-Life Balance

1. I do not wake up before 7:00 a.m. and I go to sleep before 1 a.m.
2. I always get 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep each day.
3. I do not take meetings on Wednesdays.
4. At least one day a month I binge watch YouTube or TikTok for a few hours.
5. I do not work while I’m eating lunch and dinner, even if that means I eat in 10 minutes and am 10 minutes late to a meeting.
6. I play a phone game every single day.
7. I meditate (or take ten minutes to be mindful) and exercise (even if it's just ten pushups) every day.
8. I call or meet my mom every day.
9. I schedule monthly catch-ups with my friends.
10. I take my dog for a long walk and/or play with him every day.

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Today, when anyone asks me for work-life balance tips, my number one recommendation is to make rules for yourself that you pledge not to break. Write them down. Pin them up on your refrigerator. Ask your friends to hold you accountable.

Besides the ones I use, other great suggestions include not working after a certain hour in the evenings, reading a book or watching a TV show every day, or committing to a gym.

First, come up with some rules you already follow 80% of the time and make them something you do 100% of the time. It’s much easier to increase frequency than it is to start something new, something that you may not even enjoy. For example, many of my 20-something friends routinely try to sleep earlier, but the truth is that in our 20s, our bodies often want to be up past midnight. So don’t force things.

Second, make sure you’re making rules you can afford to commit to. I have a friend who committed to a meditation retreat every weekend for a month. Then they ended up with a million dollar merger at their law firm. Now they don’t meditate at all. I’m not saying you can’t break rules in an emergency or even frequently — I sometimes end up with an important meeting on Wednesday. But the fact that it’s nowhere close to the five to 10 meetings on my average day is very valuable. Meeting your rules will make you feel accomplished, so don't set yourself up to fail.

Third, make sure the rules aren’t independently stressful — or will force you to turn a hobby into a job. I have rules about posting on social media, playing the piano regularly, or finishing writing projects, but they don’t help with work-life balance because they are serious hobbies/side-careers that basically feel the same as work. (For example, here I am, up late, editing this article for posting.)

Last and most importantly, remember that you are valuable. Your fun time is valuable. Your friends and family are valuable. Part of the reason I play a game on my phone every day, even when I’m too busy to get through all my work emails, is because I’m the head of a fashion house and I don’t want to shirk those duties just because I have "more important" things to do. There are always more important things. But you are worth the time it takes to make you happy. Prior commitments to friends and family and fellow fashionistas are important too. At the end of the day, it is better to err on the side of less work than less life.

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