[Applause] how do you go about establishing that work-life balance that everybody you know talks about and thinks about you've got I mean you live a big life right and how do you how do you I get down in a lot I get it I teach senior executive kind of leadership classes at Amazon for our most senior execs and I also teach or not teach but I also speak to interns so kind of all across the spectrum and I get this question about work-life balance all the time from from both ends of the spectrum and the
my view is I don't even like the phrase work-life balance I think it's misleading I like the phrase work life harmony because I know that if I am energized at work happy at work feeling like I'm adding value part of a team whatever energizes you that makes me better at home it makes me a better husband a better father and likewise if I'm happy at home it makes me a better employee a better boss all the things it's not about it's not primarily about there may be crunch periods where it's about the number of hours
in the week but that that's not the that's not the real thing usually it's about do you have energy and is this is your work depriving you of energy or is your work generating energy for you and you know there are people everybody in this room notice people you fall into these two camps you're in a meeting and the person comes in the room some people come into the meeting and they add energy to the meeting other people come into the meeting and the whole meeting just deflates and those people just they drain energy from
the meeting and you have to decide which was host of people you're gonna be are you gonna add energy and the same thing at home and the same thing at home and it's so it's a wheel it's a cycle it's a flywheel it's not a balance because of balance that's why that metaphor is so dangerous because it implies there's a strict trade-off and you could be out of work have all the time for your family in the world but really depressed and demoralized about your work situation and your family wouldn't want to be anywhere near
you they would wish you would take a vacation from them and so it's not about the number of hours not primarily I suppose if you went crazy with you know 100 hours a week or something yeah that maybe maybe there are limits and they probably but I've never had a problem and I think it's because both sides of my life give me energy and that's what I would recommend that's what I do recommend to interns and xxxx you
