00:01:15.600In the course of one day, we could focus on our family, on our friends, on our work, on our side hustle, on our other side hustle, on our health, or on our community.
00:01:30.560This article happened to be written by one of my more brilliant friends, Christina Wallace, who is a professor at Harvard Business School.
00:01:38.360And what Christina is arguing in this is that everyone deserves a season to step back from work, that there is incredible power in being able to take time off.
00:01:52.300Now, we talked about this before with regards to moms taking a power pause with Neha Roosh.
00:01:59.140But what if everyone had the opportunity to take a season off from work, off from their career, off to pursue their passions, off to take care of their family?
00:06:20.960I'm just delighted that that HBR, the Harvard Business Review, was excited by the topic as well.
00:06:25.800I sort of thought this might be anathema, a world that's all about productivity and success and growth.
00:06:33.400But it was part of a whole series that they ran on sabbaticals and on interruptions in work. And this was inspired by the research I did and the work that I wrote leading up to a book I published about a year and a half ago called The Portfolio Life.
00:06:49.540And at the core of this model that I had developed to think about, I don't even want to call
00:06:56.680the relationship between work and life because work is a subset of life.
00:07:00.120But at the core of this model is the permission to balance and rebalance your life the same
00:07:07.820way you think about balancing and rebalancing a financial portfolio, the mix of things in
00:07:14.600your life, from your work to your family, your health, your community, your contributions
00:07:19.700and other ways, that that mix can be designed and then redesigned when you need different
00:07:40.960It's not the same as, like, taking parental leave or going on disability or anything like that.
00:07:45.480Or even, you know, a full sabbatical where you're just stepping away for a year.
00:07:49.400But it might be a season where you say, like, I just need it to not be top priority.
00:07:54.700And that could be a season where, you know, I mentioned this in the piece, like, after you've had your first kid and you've come back to work, there's just so much you don't know about your new family rhythms.
00:08:07.220What kind of kid you're going to have?
00:08:08.880What kind of recovery you might be having as a birthing person?
00:08:11.660Like all of those things, you're still figuring it out.
00:08:14.400And there might be three months, six months where you're like, can I be at like 80% instead
00:08:21.080of 110% at work so that I have that flexibility to deal with all of the other things going
00:08:32.420It was a perfect case study in my own living room of my husband, who had a season of stepping back when he had the opportunity to act on an off-Broadway stage, which was one of his sort of college dreams.
00:08:46.980What was he doing when he got that opportunity?
00:08:49.260He was a deputy general counsel for the New York City Office of Housing Recovering Operations.
00:08:54.380So they were doing all of the like the Hurricane Sandy rebuilding.
00:08:57.140and he he was like helping new yorkers get back in their houses which is a wonderful
00:09:03.340mission-driven work and he loved it and he wanted to act in this off-broadway play and so
00:09:10.540finding ways to kind of pull back his commitment for a fixed period of time
00:09:15.200allowed him to have this other thing that gave him so much and that when it was over it was
00:09:21.120eight weeks he got to go back and was like okay game on like i'm reinvigorated i have so much
00:09:26.940more energy. He ended up getting promoted to general counsel and then acting director. Like
00:09:30.920it took over sort of the energy he had. He directed it back to his job. But sort of this
00:09:39.380idea that you have seasons where your primary ambition might not be your profession seems
00:09:45.720radical. And yet the reaction to this piece so far has been pretty resounding in support
00:09:52.640that this is a thing that needs to happen. Well, I think it seems radical to women raised when we
00:09:59.900were raised as well. Okay. Because we had a very highly specific idea of what success as a woman.
00:10:11.100So where we were raised, how we were raised, where we went to school. Yes. Right. Of what success as0.80
00:10:17.560woman looked like and in a lot of ways it looked like success as a man yes it looked like you climb0.99
00:10:23.360that corporate ladder you lean in you're a girl boss i think lean in did a massive disservice to
00:10:30.080so many women frankly huge disservice and then also knowing what we know about what she was doing0.68
00:10:37.140behind the scenes yeah at the company that has essentially ruined the world i mean that's a whole
00:10:41.900other episode okay whole other episode but so success for me was work get credit for that work
00:10:53.700you'd be praised for that work make good money for that work and then I tangentially wanted kids
00:11:01.380and a husband yeah but in in my mind success was corporate success yeah career success work
00:11:09.480success. I think that the generations that are coming up beneath us have different ideas
00:11:14.300of what that should look like as well they fucking should. Yes. Okay. As well they should.0.98
00:11:20.800Which is why you're seeing all of the, you know, the typical complaints of like,
00:11:24.580this generation doesn't want to work. And they're like, well, they don't want to work the way you've
00:11:28.280defined work. They don't want to work the way that we have defined work because the way we defined
00:11:33.460work, for me, it's very burnout heavy. And also, corporations didn't change. We grabbed the brass
00:11:45.040rings, but we also then didn't get adequate leave for caregiving or even flexibility for
00:11:53.240caregiving. I think about this all the time when I was coming up in magazines and then the digital
00:11:58.960properties that replaced magazines. And I watched my colleagues with kids still stay in the office
00:12:04.420till seven o'clock at night. And now I think about it. I'm like, when did you see your kids?
00:12:09.320They didn't. They didn't. That's exactly right. Because there's this the entire design of work
00:12:15.700in the U.S. comes out of the assumption that you have a stay at home partner managing the friction
00:12:23.340of life right yes entire notion of if you are in the office you are you are able to stay until
00:12:29.660seven because someone else is making dinner and someone else can pick up the dry cleaning and
00:12:34.960deal with the doctor's offices and it's fine that school gets out at 3 10 every day of the week and
00:12:42.160there's no guaranteed after school anywhere that is fine because there's someone else and even if
00:12:49.080it's not a wife at home, it could easily be a mother, a nanny, a paid help, whatever.
00:12:56.280The notion is paid, paid life managers. Correct. That there is someone else dealing with it. And so
00:13:02.480the, the entire point where you are like, no, but I am the one dealing with it or me and my
00:13:09.240partner are dealing with it. And together we need flexibility, right? This isn't just a woman thing,
00:13:13.680although it does fall on women by default, is that like all of us are at a breaking point
00:13:21.040because it literally cannot coexist. The expectations that we have for success in
00:13:28.460corporate life and the expectations we have, not just for like good parenting, I mean like
00:13:34.260survival parenting. Yes. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. No, no, not at all.
00:13:40.220All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk about the changes that will have to be made for this to actually work.
00:13:54.620Okay, we're back with Christina Wallace.
00:13:57.080She is in her Harvard Business School office, which is not in Cambridge.
00:14:02.560She is also the author of The Portfolio Life, which is a book I reference a lot to explain to people that your career doesn't have to be 90% of what defines you.
00:14:46.840Profitable. Thank you. Because I take all of your advice because I have no skills of my own. I just listen to I listen to people who are smarter than me. But I did. I got to become a very small investor in the new Romeo and the sexy new Romeo and Juliet production, which just came to a close because you have created a way for smaller investors to invest in Broadway shows.
00:15:08.420It is. It's taking everything I learned about angel investing in the tech world, which is where I spent a decade after graduating from business school as an entrepreneur myself.
00:15:17.380I was like, oh, this exists. The way for fractional investors to make small, very risky bets so that they, too, can have a portfolio because they are so risky.
00:15:27.100You want to be able to place multiple bets. And when I was able to reconnect with the Broadway world, which is where I started my career as an actor and a director,
00:15:34.800the opportunity to say like, wait, this applies here too. Why are we making this gate-kipped0.99
00:15:41.340world where you can only enter if you can afford to lose 50 grand at a time?
00:15:45.920Right. Which I cannot. Which you cannot.
00:15:48.360Same here. To be able to bring more people in and get to feel connected to the art and also just
00:15:55.020have a diversified investment portfolio. Like it's smart on every dimension.
00:15:59.280Yeah. I mean, it was such a cool experience too, because I did feel so much more connected to not
00:16:04.560just that show, but to Broadway, generally. So yeah, and you know, we should actually we should
00:16:09.760also do a whole other episode on this. Happily. Happily. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll do that. But
00:16:14.180now, right now, we're talking about seasons of stepping back, which I do think is part of the
00:16:20.000portfolio, because you want to step up in one section of the portfolio, and maybe step back
00:16:25.940in the other. Yeah. Really, really interesting thing that a girlfriend was just saying to me.
00:16:32.880She's a lawyer with three kids, all of whom are now very much school age, which is different than the smaller age.
00:16:41.880But she still has a lot to do, and her husband is an entrepreneur.
00:16:46.040So she was deciding between a job that she thought she was going to love, but that she was really going to have to, like, throw herself into in a very intense way.
00:16:57.160And then a job that paid good money that she knew that she could, I mean, punch in, punch out and just kind of coast. And she chose the coast job. Yeah. Because she's like, I kind of don't want to be the striver right now. I want to make money. I want to support my family. And I want to be done at five o'clock. Yeah.
00:17:18.500And so that's that was her season of stepping back. Yeah. Right. But what if and you talk about this in your paper, what if organizations and corporations were actually on board? What if we didn't have to like secretly be like, I'm just phoning this shit in?0.79
00:17:34.460Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a radical idea. And I talked with a bunch of friends who are, you know, people leaders, HR, chief HR managers at various companies to say, like, what would it take to actually operationalize this? And it was interesting that, that, you know, they weren't opposed to it, but their immediate, understandably, their immediate take is like, well, okay, how do we scale this? And how do we make it sustainable? And how do we make sure? And I was like, fair, fair, fair. Okay, so it can't just be like a one off thing.0.96
00:18:03.660But the same sort of notion that many companies are now thinking about with sabbaticals, that it's a benefit that you could earn after a series of years, right, service to the company, and that you get to a point where you say, like, I'm ready to take this, in my case, calling it, literally calling it, I need a season of stepping back.
00:18:23.060And you define it with your team, with your manager, your HR folks, and you say, you know, I need four months, I need six months.
00:18:31.040If it's going to be longer term, then you do like your friend did. And even like I did in joining the faculty at Harvard Business School saying, I have a longer season. I have a chapter of life where I want something different in my relationship to work. And so I'm going to do this role for three, five, seven years in order to have that chapter of life.
00:18:50.480For these shorter seasons, you might say, like, I need six months of flexibility, of, you know, off camera for meetings, of not being expected to be online on Fridays, of understanding that I am literally unavailable after 6 p.m., not even for emergencies, figure it out, of whatever those accommodations look like.
00:19:15.760That basically takes you down to, in my head, sort of that 70, 80% effort rather than 100%. And you define it that way and you message it that way, which is crucial, right? Because if you don't tell anyone else, then people look at you and think you're slacking off.
00:19:33.460Right. Right. And then it's held against you. Even if even if your direct manager is on board and they say, OK, I'm not going to hold it against you when it comes for promotions or, you know, reviews or or compensation conversation.
00:19:46.440If everyone else thinks you're slacking off and getting away with it, you're going to have social ramifications within the workplace.
00:19:53.540So having it clearly packaged, named, communicated, and make sure everyone realizes that this is available to you under these circumstances too, and we are pro this person having this season of stepping back because it creates opportunities for other folks to step up, allows that retention, huge from a retention point of view.
00:20:19.420You don't get people to just say, you know what, I just need to leave.
00:20:32.900And it's what I'm thinking about right now is that so much of what you have said about the stepping back, I also actually think should try to be normalized to keep people from burning out.
00:21:06.700We really should be able to not look at our email, to pause notifications, to not be called after 6 p.m.
00:21:15.160I think that that could be normalized in a lot of situations.
00:21:19.420Not every single one of them in a lot of situations.
00:21:22.240But I am just so skeptical, given the fact that so many corporations and organizations have not created a more hospitable workplace for human beings to be in, that they would be amenable to this season of life switch.
00:21:46.120unless they were forced to, unless they knew it was going to impact their bottom line,
00:21:50.600of which it probably will because people will just start phoning it in.
00:21:53.900Yes. So I 100% agree with you. I don't think anyone's going to willingly jump on this train
00:22:00.000just yet. But what I do hope from naming it, making it a thing in the same way that like,
00:22:06.820I didn't invent the portfolio life, but I gave it a name. I put it together. I packaged it up
00:22:11.360and gave it a platform out in the world. And so people suddenly started recognizing,
00:22:16.120oh, I do that already. But now that there's a name, it sort of legitimizes it. I think the same
00:22:21.480idea with the season of stepping back. In the beginning, companies are going to lose people,
00:22:27.380right? Rather than being able to step back, they're just going to quit or they're going to
00:22:30.500phone it in and companies will get frustrated. And we're going to start seeing this behavior.
00:22:36.040And when asked about it, people are going to say, you know what, I'm in a season where I just need
00:22:39.360to step back. Like, I haven't lost my ambition. I just need a freaking break. I need flexibility
00:22:46.500and autonomy and just a little bit of breathing room. And my belief, assuming the world still
00:22:54.520stands by the time that this sort of infiltrates the culture, is that we have this transition
00:23:01.780period where the managers who become the ones who get to set the new rules in five or 10 years are
00:23:11.240the ones who had to completely redesign their life. We're already seeing this with millennials0.67
00:23:15.660getting to step into a position of authority where they are managing in a way that was sort
00:23:20.340of how we wish we had been managed. And I think we will see the same. There will be some companies
00:23:26.780that lead the way on this in the same way there have been companies that led the way on sabbatical
00:23:49.140for the generational shift to acknowledge how necessary this is.
00:23:55.240Yeah, I think it will take a bit for the next generation.
00:23:58.440And again, the one who wasn't indoctrinated by lean in does value this this time away.
00:24:05.440My concern, and I talk about this a lot, is that there is now so much messaging about just check out, just lean out all together.
00:24:13.260Just, you know, let a man support. I'm talking about women here, but, you know, let a man support you.
00:24:18.700And, you know, as as someone who's as wonky about economics as I am, you'll appreciate this.
00:24:25.840I crunch the numbers constantly. You know, the average American man is bringing home about $52,000. The household spends about $64,000. Where are these elusive rich men that are just going to support the soft girls and trad wives? Okay. Because the single family income household is not thriving right now.
00:24:45.840No. No. Even just the notion of leaning out and phoning it in and not caring. I I hate that, too. And not just because I want everyone to be ambitious. It's just like, why exist? Why do anything if it's not something that matters to you? And it's not that every single thing you do has to be your life's work. Lord knows I have taken jobs for the paycheck.
00:25:07.500But that paycheck has enabled the things that I deeply care about. And that empowerment is the point, right?
00:25:16.840And freedom. Freedom and agency. It's the freedom. You get to choose.
00:25:20.320So this notion of like, well, I'm just going to not care and hope they don't notice. Like, what an unfulfilled way to live your Tuesdays.
00:25:30.720Not to mention how dangerous it is if you're thinking from a diversification standpoint.
00:25:36.340Do not put any eggs in just one basket, whether it's a job or a man or an industry or anything, because those eggs are going to break.
00:25:46.420Look around or they've got or they've got bird flu.
00:25:48.900They've got bird flu and you've got to break them.
00:25:51.940I try not to be a downer about all of this because I ultimately feel like this is a really empowering message.
00:25:59.600to be able to have this mix of things that you love that bring you joy. I am so grateful that
00:26:07.340I live in the age that a portfolio is even acceptable in a way that it wasn't for our
00:26:12.600parents and for our grandparents. So I find it to be incredibly just freeing. And also that freedom
00:26:21.160has the flip side, which is it also gives me diversification because the world is on fire.
00:26:26.320Right. Right. Absolutely. One more break. When we get back, I want to talk a little bit about how will you measure your life?
00:26:39.060Chew on this bold question from Dentine Gum. Is it ever okay to compliment a millennial on their skinny jeans in 2026? Dentine, chew bold.
00:26:56.320okay we are back christina wallace how will you measure your life i measure my life um i
00:27:04.520i have a very wonky way and then i have a very simple way okay okay i want to both go okay first
00:27:10.500the wonky way is i put together this personal balanced scorecard wow that is such a nerd i
00:27:18.060love this about you i know i i took this thing it exists in the business world it's called a
00:27:23.620balance scorecard, you use it for your strategic priorities and then your objectives and then you
00:27:28.280have your metrics and you can assess whether we hit our goals for the year. And I adapted this
00:27:34.500probably 10 years ago for myself as basically a precursor to the portfolio model that says my work
00:27:41.860is not the only thing that matters to me. And yet my work is the one thing that's really easy to
00:27:46.500measure. And so if I'm thinking about how do I measure my life and I'm only measuring one piece
00:27:53.500of it, then I'm going to over-optimize that piece, and I'm going to ignore all the other.
00:27:58.680And so I gave myself the challenge of my health goals, of my financial goals, of my personal
00:28:04.960relationship goals and priorities. Like, how might I measure whether I am living the priorities that
00:28:13.060I say are my priorities? And so I came up with this whole thing. Do you want to just bust out
00:28:18.880in how do you measure always it's it's constant have we been to marie's crisis together oh yeah
00:28:28.800back in the day right if it was a long it was a long time ago it was like two lifetimes yeah it
00:28:34.080was so um so i have this very complicated it's not that complicated but it's color-coded it's
00:28:40.020in excel uh and i i do this every year i check in with it halfway through the year i adjust my goals
00:28:45.440if necessary. And I give myself an overall grade, right? At the end of the year, you're kind of like
00:28:49.22087.2% of your goals were met. And you're like, yay. But that ultimately, it's not about the
00:28:55.740percentages or the fact that I just got a B plus last year. It's about the process of forcing
00:29:02.440myself to think through what do I actually care about? Also the process of realizing, wait, I have
00:29:07.640too many things on this list. Like this is too much. It can't be a priority if everything is on
00:29:13.420the list so what am i going to say no to for now what is going to take a back seat maybe for this
00:29:18.560year and make space for the other things and so the question on the bottom of my personal balance
00:29:24.400scorecard is the simple way which i phrase it as are you happy but what i mean by that because
00:29:32.980happiness is elusive did you have more good days than bad oh like on balance we go through rough
00:29:39.660periods. They go through rough months, you know? But on balance, did you have more good days than
00:29:46.440bad? And it basically is saying, is the friction worth it given your current setup, your combination
00:29:55.900of activities, the way you spend your time, the way you spend your money, who you spend your day
00:30:00.140with? And that question has allowed me a couple of times in the last decade to dramatically
00:30:07.260recalibrate. In one case, because I loved the mission of the work I was doing, but the day-to-day
00:30:14.100friction was killing me. The people I worked with, the processes, the red tape, even the commute,
00:30:23.500all of it, every single day, I was miserable. And after a year of being miserable, you're like,
00:30:29.080okay, something's got to change. It doesn't matter if the mission is there, because every day I come
00:30:35.200home, grumpy, and I don't want to live my life that way. So that's how I measure. Do I have more
00:30:41.660good days than bad? And the upshot to that is the second you say no, you have the power to make a
00:30:49.400change. It's not fixed. It's not fixed. It's not fixed. And there are economic realities, right?
00:30:57.160But I think there's a lot of power in giving yourself permission to make a change, to think
00:31:03.040about making a change to think I don't have to be stuck like this. Yes. And even within those
00:31:09.520economic realities, there's a great book that came out last year right on the same time mine did
00:31:13.400called The Good Enough Job, which I adore. I haven't heard about this. Oh, you must.
00:31:18.920I think his name is Simone Stoltsoff. Okay. It is the empowerment of saying your job doesn't have
00:31:28.000to be everything in the same way that your life partner doesn't have to be everything your best
00:31:34.700friend your lover your economic buttress you're all the things like you're allowed to have other
00:31:38.760things in your life and let your life partner fulfill some of those roles in the same way your
00:31:45.240job can do that and the good enough job if you think about like albert einstein was a swiss patent
00:31:51.060officer while he was coming up with the theory of relativity and he needed it he wasn't famous yet
00:31:56.000He didn't have grants paying for him to just think about science in Princeton.
00:32:00.520He loved this job because it was notoriously undemanding intellectually.
00:32:06.580He could literally go in and stamp paper all day long while thinking about the special theory of relativity in his brain.
00:32:12.360That is an amazing example of a good enough job where potentially the point is, let's address that economic reality.
00:32:23.480and also don't expect that job to fulfill all of these other things around creativity and growth
00:32:31.540and community and you know mission fulfillment like have hobbies for that join a intramural
00:32:40.740sports team volunteer at your faith you know community whatever that looks like
00:32:46.960It says, like, at the end of the day, I can have a crappy day at work, but still have a good day if I'm getting those kind of psychological needs met in other dimensions.
00:32:59.520Yeah, that's really interesting to me.
00:33:02.160You know, what parts of our life are meeting our needs?
00:33:06.300I have two friends who were attorneys for a very long time.
00:33:11.580Most of my friends who are lawyers hate being lawyers.
00:33:45.620Because I, on the other hand, am a person pretty much without hobbies because so many of the things that I do for money are other people's hobbies, if that makes sense.
00:34:03.480They would be a hobby, but you have monetized them.
00:34:06.260And so they are now your way of working.
00:34:08.500So the challenge for you, and this is especially going to be hard because you have so many income streams and you've got kids and you've got a partner and you've got this rich community of friends that you spend meaningful time with, is like what's that thing that you don't have to be good at that gives you the chance to turn off your brain?
00:34:33.180And I find for many people, especially like you and me, who our hobbies could be, I mean, like Broadway was my hobby and now I run a fund.
00:34:42.440Exactly. That's the thing. I'm like, I love listening to podcasts. And then now I monetize several podcasts.
00:34:48.080Now you monetize it. So you think about almost what's the way to get out of my brain? And usually the answer is to get into your body.
00:34:55.060And by that, I mean, go learn how to throw pottery on a pottery wheel. Your hands get messy. You can't touch your phone. It's very humbling because almost no one is good at it. Certainly not at the beginning.
00:35:10.840or go rock climbing or do anything that requires you to be utmost focused on your body and the
00:35:20.400choices you're making. And your brain has no part of it. And certainly your phone,
00:35:26.000your monetization, how you look while doing it. You're not photographing for the content. You're
00:35:30.620not turning it into your next great pitch, which is hard for you. I know. It's so hard for me.
00:35:35.180You are so good at finding the story. Yeah. Everywhere. So give yourself permission to not find the story. To not find the story. I'm confident at some point you're going to turn not finding the story into a story. And that's that's on you. That's your choice.
00:35:52.020But I think even I challenged a CEO about this because I do this coaching now with a lot of senior executives through executive education here at Harvard.
00:36:01.860And these CEOs are like, I don't have a hobby and I don't even know where to start.
00:36:05.620And I was like, where you start is your hobby for this year is to get a hobby.
00:36:09.720So you're going to put aside every other week, a night or a weekend day or something.
00:36:14.560And your goal is to try a different thing each time.
00:36:21.200you can go to a concert you can pick up yoga every single time you're going to try something new
00:36:27.180because the hobby is to get a hobby at the end of the year your goal is to have narrowed down
00:36:32.720all of these experiences to like three that you want to like learn more about and in the meantime
00:36:40.020every time you go to a dinner every time you're at a cocktail party rather than talking about how
00:36:44.840your company is performing because literally no one cares no one cares no talk about your journey
00:36:49.700to find a hobby and ask people what their hobbies are and like make this part of your personality
00:36:56.880and you're gonna have a lot more fun a lot more fun a lot more fun it's true i mean i the the
00:37:02.980problem is i just have i do have a lot of fun uh i find it hard to let go which you know about me
00:37:07.380nick and i went rock climbing together in joshua tree we hired a guide so we wouldn't have to think
00:37:11.340about it right oh that's exactly like you don't want to have to plan it and put it on the thing
00:37:15.880You have to like turn the executive function off. And I think for you, you know, you and I have a very similar DNA, which is like, I have to protect myself. And so all of this, the diversification, the earnings, the 12 things that you can do if everything else falls apart, comes from a place of not even scarcity, although it is also.
00:37:50.800And so it comes from a place of scarcity, but also just comes from this inability to stop scanning and constantly reassessing.
00:38:02.480And so part of the challenge, right, what you're missing if you think about your needs, right, the whole point here is not just to pick up a hobby.