Being a star employee doesn’t necessarily mean being the first in the office and the last to leave.
Some of the best performers Harley Finkelstein knows have strict working hours. They just use their time really well.
“You don’t have to work 80 hours a week to perform well and be a high performer,” the president of Shopify said on a recent episode of the podcast “Aspire with Emma Grede.” “I know people who work 40 hours a week, and they’re the best performers of all time. They’re incredibly efficient with their time.”
Finkelstein said his work schedule has differed at different points in his life, and that work-life balance is “very dependent on specific circumstances.”
“Before I got married, before I had kids, there was a period where I could always work 80 hours a week, but when I had a newborn, I couldn’t work 80 hours a week,” he said.
Strictly speaking, Finkelstein doesn’t like to use the term work-life balance.
“I think the idea of work-life balance is a little bit misguided. I actually think what we’re all looking for is some kind of harmony,” he said. “I think everyone needs to find their own version.”
For Finkelstein, that means “some Saturdays I have to work, and some Thursday afternoons I go for a walk with my wife.”
Finding “harmony between work and life”
Other corporate executives also challenge the concept of work-life balance.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also supports the idea of work-life harmony over work-life balance.
“I always thought I needed to find a balance between being able to relax and being considered work,” he said in 2019. “What I try to do is reconcile my work with the things I care deeply about, my deep interests.”
Similarly, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called work-life balance a “debilitating” term and said people need to think of work and personal life more as a “circle.”
“I don’t like the word ‘balance’ because it suggests trade-offs,” Bezos said at Italian Tech Week in October. “I like work-life harmony, because if you’re happy at home, you’ll do well at work. If you’re better at work, you’ll be better at home.”
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