In reality, the job of my dreams consisted of overnight flights where I'd get little to no rest, then hit the ground running as soon as I arrived at my destinations. After I'd fly back home from some trips, it would take me nearly a week to recover from jet lag. My stress levels were often cranked up, dealing with flight delays, deadlines, and navigation across different states and countries.
Denise and I met at our new faculty orientation, which seems like a lifetime ago, and grew up together as academics. She chose administration early on, and I taught for decades before giving up faculty status to become a full-time fellowship director. As she advanced from dean to provost to president, my role as the administrative "trailing" spouse altered in both subtle and overt ways at each new institution, but the core was always rooted in our dedication to the universities we served and to each other.
Somewhere along the way, I started wearing burnout like a badge of honour. In weekly lab check-ins, I make sure to mention I was in the lab over the weekend - slipping in a quiet signal that I was going above and beyond. I've made sure to send e-mails early in the morning or late at night to demonstrate I was working long hours.
"I married somebody who is the opposite of me. He is so organized," Lawrence said during an appearance on Tuesday's episode of the "Smartless" podcast. "He's an anchor. Everything is ordered, like on the sink. Like I have to, you know, like keep the closet doors closed, and I have like my little jobs that I work really hard to do," she said.
Michael Bloomberg may be worth more than $100 billion, but he doesn't think that salary is everything when it comes to early jobs. "People make the mistake of going to work for a place where they get paid the most. Particularly when you're young, that's not what life is about," Bloomberg said in an interview with Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, that aired on January 7.
That title's not a typo. The 5-to-9 is the time period before and after the 9-to-5 workday. Social media influencers have racked up millions of views showing off their outside-of-work schedules-#5to9routine has more than 35 million views on TikTok. During these videos, quick cuts of clips show off aspirational mornings and evenings packed with journaling, working out, meditating, cleaning, side hustling, and more. The trend's an offshoot of the " 5am club," which counts Mark Zuckerberg and Michelle Obama as early-rising members.
I was off work for a few weeks, but without paid leave I had to return sooner than doctors advised. I worked from home for a few months since I still couldn't drive. I loved the challenge of the work, the way no day was ever the same, and I had thrived on that pace. But I was still recovering. Winded by the smallest physical activity, I struggled with memory, and words sometimes came out scrambled or not at all.
Planning a career pivot raises some big questions: in which direction should you move, how do you make the shift, and, crucially, when is the right time to do it? In 2025, Business Insider spoke to professionals who made mid-career pivots, including some who did so more than once. Have you made an unconventional career move? If you're comfortable discussing it with a reporter, please fill out this quick form.
I was entirely on my own when I was 19. While I was enrolled in college, I worked full-time at night in the call center of a fintech company, Jack Henry & Associates. It was a gritty, hands-on role, but an exciting time to be with the company, which was growing quickly. I didn't have a typical college experience. I worked a lot so I could pay for my car and home. At work, I put my hand up any chance I could. I was never the smartest person, but I worked really hard and was always willing to figure out problems. Even if I'd never done something, I would figure it out. I couldn't afford to fail, personally or professionally.
After the pandemic, I realized life was too short to keep saying "one day." Sitting on the dock at my parents' cottage in Ontario, the sun melting into the lake, it hit us: "If not now, when?" Almost a year later, in September 2023, we packed up our two kids and moved to the South of France for a year.
even when women are the primary breadwinners, they perform two to four times more housework than men. Their research explores how households could benefit if lower-income men adjusted their schedules to take on more domestic tasks and allowed higher-income women to work longer hours outside the home. Their analysis revealed that the time women spend on housework decreases after divorce, while men's time increases.
You quit the 9-to-5 to have more control over your time. You wanted flexibility, autonomy, and the freedom to structure your days around your life instead of someone else's schedule. Yet here you are, apologizing to a client for not responding to a message immediately. Feeling guilty on a Tuesday afternoon when you've only worked for four hours that day. Checking Slack at 9:00 PM because that's been your routine for most of your working career.
Research going back almost 100 years finds that when you have a task to complete, you are highly motivated to finish it. It stays active in your memory, and you seek opportunities to get it done. That tendency is normally a good one. But on a break, it is a factor that will drive your mind back to the workplace-even when you're supposed to be relaxing. To give yourself the best chance to chill, see if you can close out key tasks before you leave. At a minimum, reach a good stopping place on tasks so that you don't feel like you have left them incomplete.
Before my husband and I had children, I earned more than him. I had a senior role at a well-known brand and then, 20 years ago, started a leadership development consultancy. When we had children, I decided to work fewer hours to take care of our boys, who are now 14 and 12. As I was self-employed and could therefore be more flexible with my work hours, I took charge of everything at home, including getting the boys ready for school,
A nest egg of $18 million per year is very large. At a safe 3.7% withdrawal rate, the Redditor could spend $666,000 per year. Since the OP said he's spending $300K plus his mortgage payments, he's most likely well below that amount (depending on just how much the mortgage balance is). Since his income needs would be more than met by his savings, there's really very little reason to continue doing work he doesn't enjoy.
About one in three Australians are time-poor with the majority working unpaid hours, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. But women are bearing the brunt with more than 36 per cent always feeling rushed or pressed for time, compared with about 30 per cent of men. The most common reason for feeling rushed was trying to balance work and family. It comes as the bureau issues its key takeaways on how we spent our time in 2024. It categorised the way Australians spend their time in four ways: personal care for self, employment and education, unpaid work and free time. The survey found most people had done unpaid work but fewer people reported doing unpaid work on days they did paid work.
We've been trained for years, if not decades, to go at a certain pace, react fast, and constantly strive for success. But at what cost? Workplace culture can breed constant reactivity, where multiple demands dominate our days. The question is about balance: how do we sustain good energy and personal growth throughout our careers, remaining curious and creative without burning out? We're actual humans needing a more inclusive, balanced approach to live well. That's really been the key theme, regardless of industry or level
Cuban's origins are fairly humble. He was raised in a middle-class family in Pittsburgh and once had a job selling garbage bags door-to-door around his neighborhood (yes, you read that correctly). He bootstrapped his way up, starting with bartending and software sales before founding MicroSolutions, which he sold for $6 million in 1990, and later co-founding Broadcast.com, acquired by Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock during the dot-com boom.
In a report conducted by the Guardian, the proposal of a four-day week for schools was met with an overwhelmingly positive response. Parents cited everything from their children's mental health to not worrying so much about absences as reasons for the four-day week to work. Teachers even loved the idea, noting that if the fifth day of the week were simply a teacher workday, it would free up their weekends from school and teaching tasks, allowing them to actually get a much-needed (and deserved) break.
