How successful Kiwis approach sleep and work life balance

Friday, 17 May 2019

Getting a solid eight hours sleep is highly recommended by health professionals, but does the cream of New Zealand business actually get it?

With Alibaba founder Jack Ma has claimed a 12-hour working day, six-days-a-week was a blessing.

And Australian entrepreneur and Wizard Home Loans founder Mark Bouris is just the latest to post an endorsement of the burn-out fad, endorsing the 3am rise, or 'hustle'.

So we asked a number of successful New Zealanders what their habits were, and found that some live by the eight-hour mantra, while others are night owls.

Here's how they approach rest and maintain a work-life balance.

**READ MORE:

* Early bird gets the jetlag: Getting up at 7am every day can ruin your health

* Millennials are rejecting the 9-5 workday

* Why Kiwis are working fewer hours than ever**

Michele Wilson, co-founder and chief executive of I am Eva and Frankie Apothecary

Running two thriving companies means I need to have pretty next level self awareness. I need to be healthy, both physically and mentally.

I need at least seven hours sleep a night, and I feel at my best when I am in bed before 10pm and up at around 5am. Rising a couple of hours before the rest of my family means I can spend time meditating and visualising my day.

I've trialled the 60-hour working week, the late nights and working on weekends, but [now] I work approximately 30-hours-a-week. 

It might not seem a lot for a chief executive of two companies but I have found that I am more than twice as productive, and my businesses are more successful if I follow the following habits.

My months, weeks and days are all meticulously planned out with tasks that will achieve goals. I delegate a lot of my workload and because I have babies waiting for me to come home to them, not a minute is wasted. 

Weekends are my treasures and I make sure I do something outdoors every weekend so that my wairua (spirit) is strong.

Kendall Flutey, co-founder and chief executive, Banqer

For me, sleep is the most important habit to get right. I know this because I had it wrong for a number of years, and everything suffered. I now sleep around eight-hours-a-night, and also take steps in the evening to ensure my circadian rhythm isn't negatively influenced.

I'd say I work anywhere between 10 and 14-hours-a-day, and about six hours in total on the weekend, assuming nothing is burning down.

During the work week I spend about 10 of those daily hours in the office, then the rest is working from home. If I'm travelling my work days are a lot longer than that as I'd rather be home at the end of the day and sleep in my own bed.

Working this much isn't ideal and my life is no longer well rounded as a consequence. But there are a few things I do ensure I do most days.

These include reading, and learning something new that has nothing to do with my day to day work. I also like to play the guitar when I've had a stressful day, I find it more effective than meditation.

As for exercise…I'm working on it. Apart from incidental activity throughout the day most of my exercise takes place on the weekend, and it's usually a walk in the hills or something like that.

Sam Stubbs, managing director, Simplicity

The secret to success is there really isn't a secret.

Success means different things to different people. High achievers like chief executives may appear to be successful individuals but external achievements don't necessarily reveal the full picture. It's important to state that.

My 'career success' has been the result of old fashioned hard work. I usually wake up at 5am.

Outside of meal times and going to the gym, I'm pretty much working in some form - meetings, phone calls, emails, networking - until I go to bed around 11pm.  

I don't adhere to a rigid schedule. Some days I start my day at the gym, other days, I enjoy the sunrise with a coffee and a good book. 

Motivation is key to working hard because if you're not properly motivated, you don't have that get up and go. One year I flew around the world 25 times. It was exhausting but it paid off, so I continued.

My motivation now is totally different. I'm motivated to make other people wealthier. I have enough and I'm in give back mode. That's a common trajectory for 'successful folks' when they reach a stage of empty success.

Perfect work-life balance is a myth. When the scales are too far out, you know it and you adjust.

With age, my definition of success has changed and I place far more value on my health, my family and friends. As Bill Gates says, I know I'm doing a good job if the people closest to me are happy.

Jonathan Waecker, chief marketing officer, The Warehouse Group

I genuinely enjoy solving marketing problems, so it's hard for me to put a number on how many hours I work because so much of it just doesn't feel like work.

I've become a morning person and am usually in the office by 7.30am and do my best to be home by 6pm. It's important for me to be 'on' as needed, so managing that flexibility is key.

Most importantly I really do get a good seven or eight hours sleep every night.

I have a pretty unrelenting habit of structuring things into lists and grids. When something is organised I feel better about my ability to tackle it. I make a point to always approach challenges through optimism, because if you're thinking about what could go right, you're more in control.

Marketing roles require you to communicate all of the time, so I like to have some quiet time. Weekend naps are a total luxury for me, and I cook at home to relax – following someone else's unnecessarily complicated instructions to create a meal is one of my favourite things!

My partner and I have a dog, and she's the best thing for getting us up early and out of the house exploring Auckland.

Lisa King, founder and chief executive, Eat My Lunch

I've never achieved the perfect balance between work and personal life. I'm not sure it's even possible as demands are always changing. You just have to do what feels right and be okay in knowing that you won't always get it perfect.

I am very much a night owl, so I tend to go to bed after 11pm and struggle to get up in the mornings. It's the one thing I'm trying to change right now as I'm finding I'm not getting enough sleep and by the afternoons, I'm yearning for a nanna nap.

For me, achieving balance is feeling that I have proactively dedicated time to the priorities in my life, instead of just reacting to what is urgent and needs attention.

I'm a planner, so I have everything – work, personal and family commitments scheduled into my diary, including school pick ups and drop offs, which is a small way for me to connect with my children regularly.

I've started scheduling quiet nights at home with my partner and making sure I'm not just filling it up with work or social commitments. I love having nothing planned.

The most significant way I've been able to put aside time for what is important, is saying no. If it's energy draining, and doesn't add real value to either my work or personal life, then I tend to say no.

Cecilia and James Robinson, serial entrepreneurs and co-founders of My Food Bag and Au Pair Link

We love working together and have found we are more efficient and frankly 'better' at what we do when we are together. Our days are incredibly varied as we juggle directorship roles, charitable projects, investor relationships, advising start-ups and speaking engagements.

Our normal hours tend to reflect school hours but we're always happy to do the extra mile after hours as well and often pick-up our laptops when the kids are in bed at 7pm.

As a family we've always focused on three key areas for wellness: sleep routines, healthy eating and exercise. With two young kids that can be quite hard to achieve. On average, we aim for eight hours sleep between 10.30pm to 6.30am.

Three days a week I get up early to go for a run or a fitness session with our personal trainer. On the other two days James has an hour long session with him.

We eat all our main meals together during the school week. In terms of our work, nowadays we fit it completely around our kids. We drop them off at school and kindy and then head off to meetings or work from our home. We often try to walk rather than drive to pick the kids up.  

For our leisure time we head out to Onetangi where we have a beach house. We go tech-free on Waiheke, other than music, and love taking the kids for long beach walks or out on the boat. 

Jamie Beaton, co-founder and chief executive of Crimson Consulting

It's impossible to achieve extraordinary results with ordinary effort. If you want to win in most competitive processes, you need to re-adjust what 'balance' means. 

Weekends are a Western concept and productivity can increase fast with a different mindset. Rather than tell yourself you 'deserve' two days off, look at how those days give you an opportunity to keep progressing towards your goals.

Global business that pits you against Chinese competitors demands obsessive intensity. Staff in Chinese start-ups work '996,'  9am to 9pm, six days a week. Executives will work much harder than that.

What works for me is averaging six-to-seven hours sleep and being willing to cut that sleep down to almost zero when required. The best chief executives of fast growing tech companies in Shanghai and Silicon Valley are 'always on'. 

When it's time to sleep, I'm a big fan of the app Headspace, which does the trick for me.

I need to surround myself with deep relationships and friendships that act as a support ecosystem. On a tough day, Sharndre and Fangzhou, my Crimson co-founders, inspire me to push through and focus with their intense work energy and boundless enthusiasm.