Slow Down to Speed Up | Making a Life, Not Just a Living
Image from Microsoft 365 Stock Images, used under license
Two weeks before the Black Monday stock market crash of October 1987, I joined a bulge bracket Wall Street firm. Thirty-five years later I finally escaped the industry to focus on what really mattered to me: helping leaders to wake up to their lives and their hidden decision architecture, to figure out what was really driving them – so hard to discern in an always-on workplace. I believe that if we can come to our senses and re-engage with our purpose and passions, we will naturally make work more sustainable, and our planet’s health will follow. Crushing recent stories of Wall Street’s culture serve as a stark indicator that little seems to have changed since the bad old days of the 80s.
Like so many others, for the first six or so years of my career, I routinely worked 100-hour weeks and never had a weekend off. Three years in a row on Christmas Eve I drove to Wales where some of my sisters lived, leaving London around 8pm, spending Christmas Day with them, and driving back on Boxing Day happy to have an entire day to myself on what is a national holiday in Britain. The work was interesting, really interesting. By and large my colleagues were extremely intelligent and highly educated individuals, some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Our client interactions, even as very young bankers, were with the most senior leaders who ran the largest corporations and financial institutions in Europe. But that wasn’t what kept me there. I think instead there was something hypnotic about the pace, the adrenalin, the crush of numbers and ideas, the gob-smacking number of zeros on the end of the dollar figures which raised the internal stakes of making an error to a fever-pitch.
As I hit the middle of my career and started having children, I was effectively side-lined into the mommy track. It paid less than it should have given the work I was doing, but we lived comfortably, put four children through private school and college, and took some great vacations. It is only now, from the distance of a few years and embedded in the soothing contours of nature at the farm, that I see how ludicrous it was.
Let’s start with a few facts about that 100-hour week:
It’s not hyperbole or exaggeration. As an analyst or associate, one actually works 100 hours or so a week. As a mid-level banker that knocks back to about 80 hours but includes significantly more travel, and as a senior banker the minimum is probably 60 hours a week, plus commute and travel.
There was (and perhaps still is) a sort of Greek-life hazing aspect of the long hours, where mid-level and senior bankers expect junior bankers to just deal with it, as they had to do.
When my work partner and I created a better environment for our analyst, she continued to work ridiculous hours anyway, apparently because of some sort of unspoken peer pressure.
Most investment bankers consider HR a necessary evil and are unlikely to care what rules and guidelines are promulgated on the grounds that HR doesn’t “get it.”
And how about that work that’s done at two or three AM or after an all-nighter? David Dinges, a prominent sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has been testing this in his lab for decades. His research and that of other sleep scientists consistently shows:
Cognitive impairments:
Even moderate sleep loss over several days leads to significant diminishment in cognitive functions, such as attention, memory, and reaction time. The effects are dose-dependent, meaning the more sleep lost, the greater the cognitive decline.
The occurrence of "microsleeps" and performance lapses, even when individuals feel they are staying awake. These brief moments of inattentiveness can lead to errors and accidents.
Mental Health Effects:
Cumulative sleep deprivation negatively impacts mood, increasing irritability, stress, and emotional instability. It can exacerbate symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Sleep-deprived individuals are more likely to take risks and make poor decisions, often without being aware of their impaired judgment.
Physical Health Consequences:
Chronic sleep deprivation weakens the immune system, making individuals more susceptible to infections and illnesses.
Sleep loss is linked to metabolic disruptions, such as insulin resistance, and an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Generous compensation may reward all the hard work, but it does nothing to offset the inevitable increase in errors, some of them consequential, and the longer lasting mental and physical health consequences. For our veterans out there, like the former Green Beret turned investment banker who tragically died on the job in May, thank you for your service. When you are sleep deprived on duty it is hopefully in service of a higher cause, and temporary. For junior investment bankers, when you are sleep deprived on duty, it is most likely in service of the vanity of a mid-level or senior banker, probably sleep deprived themselves, making what may well be an ill-advised change to a document at 3am, and the marathon only stops when you quit.
It is no secret that Wall Street attracts more than its fair share of college athletes and veterans. The stamina required in either path is a good indicator that the individual will be able to cope with the punishing pace. The Tech sector seems to be little different. And the thing that all these sleep-deprived young people are pursuing? A golden ring that seems to get further away the longer they reach for it. I know a small handful of people who made their pile, got out, and returned to a sane and balanced life far away from the ridiculous pace of Wall Street, but I can count them on one hand. Almost everyone else is chasing a dream that they seldom reach, forever living in the gap between their ideal life and their current situation. Part of the issue is the well-studied phenomenon of hedonic adaptation: the happiness of a new thing is temporary, and it is challenging over time to avoid what is known as the hedonic treadmill, an unhappy state of unnecessary or even compulsive consumption, temporary gratification masquerading as happiness, a return to the hedonic set point, and the need for further, greater consumption in pursuit of happiness.
The transformation required to reset the balance cannot emanate from junior folks demanding better work-life balance, or forcibly creating it for themselves at the expense of their career potential. I am not suggesting that more people should choose their lives and families over high-powered careers. Instead, I invite employers to stop forcing people to make impossible choices, to do the hard cultural work to normalize more realistic working conditions. Until an organization and an industry at large is committed to a sustainable level of work, work-life balance will remain as elusive as a fairy-tale unicorn. For the emotionally intelligent leaders out there – it is on you to figure this out.
Want to chat about making a life, and not just a living? Interested in discussing how you can shift the culture on your team or in your organization, and how you might lead your company to a more sustainable future? Reach out.