I’m beyond excited to share a new project with you all. Every month, I’ll be bringing you exclusive interviews with leaders from corporations, start-ups, scale-ups, and the freelance world.
Together, we’ll uncover their tips and tricks, best practices, tools, and insights on achieving professional success while maintaining high personal satisfaction.
These insights will support you in enhancing your well-being and personal satisfaction, all while reaching new heights in your performance and career.
The biggest misconception is that you are not working hard enough.
Today, I’m thrilled to release our very first interview. It features Roeland Donker, one of Amazon’s top leaders and someone who has inspired me throughout my corporate journey.
I’ve always admired Roeland for his ability to blend outstanding performance with genuine care for his team.
In his own words:
“I am Roeland, country manager at Amazon.nl, and married with children. My work is flexible, but I am available 24/7. My daughters are 8 and 10 years’ old, and this is a time that you do not want to miss anything. This makes finding the balance between work and family even more important for me personally.”
Without further ado, let’s dive into the interview and get inspired by Roeland’s insights and experiences.
How do you personally define work-life balance, and why do you think it’s important?
Work-life balance means ensuring you have energy for your work, your family, your friends and your hobby’s. The number of hours you spend on either category depends by person and by phase in your life, but it’s important to have energy for all. Moreover, energy-generating activities will cross-over into all of these areas.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced in maintaining work-life balance, and how did you manage to overcome it?
Biggest challenge is rigid working hours and schedules that ‘eat into’ your other/private responsibilities. Full flexibility in working remotely has massively improved my balance, and allows me to combine tasks more easily (e.g. attend a school play, while taking an international meeting). My biggest time saver past few years has been reducing my travel time.
What misconceptions about work-life balance have you encountered in your journey?
The biggest misconception is that you are not working hard enough (“work hard, play hard”) if you manage to have a thriving family-life and social life on top of your work. I hear little judgment from colleagues, managers or friends, but still occasionally feel “guilt” if I feel I did not contribute enough time and focus to my work. This is my biggest personal challenge.
How do you prioritize tasks and manage your time effectively? And could you share some personal strategies or tools that help you stay organized and focused?
Key mechanism is blocking time in your work calendar. This applies to lunch, drinks, sports, social gatherings, but also simply reading your email and documents. Else, you can be sure that you’ll do that during your family or social hours.
How do you encourage and support work-life balance within your team and organization?
I support remote working, flexible hours and meeting-less Friday (afternoons) so that people can wrap up their work.
How do you set boundaries between work and personal time, especially in a remote or hybrid work environment?
The flexibility in remote working and working hours does lead to ambiguity between work and private. The best way to manage for me is to have a singular calendar for both. Lunches, school trips, concerts, dinners, business trips, virtual meetings… they’re all in one calendar to secure the balance.
Not making decisions is also a way of deciding!
How do you ensure you make time for family, friends, and personal interests despite your professional responsibilities?
My personal view is that people who are ‘out there’ and connect socially with different people are generally better at doing business and managing customer experiences. It’s imminent to block time for friends & family and your hobby’s to make sure you continue to meet people and learn new insights.
How important is physical health (e.g., exercise, diet, sleep, rest) to your work-life balance, and how do you incorporate it into your routine?
A key priority is getting enough sleep (min. 7 hours, preferably 8 hours). There is a lot of scientific evidence (read: Why we Sleep, by Matthew Walker) that you should not sleep too little. Do not trust ‘successful’ (business) people that claim to only sleep 4 hours a night, or imagine what they could achieve were they sleeping 8!! On top, I prefer to run three times weekly, and try to eat better (less meat, more vegetables), but this is personal.
How do you manage and prioritize “me-time” in your schedule, and what activities do you enjoy during this personal time?
Me-time needs to be blocked like the rest to safeguard it. My guilty pleasure is concerts, and sailing during holidays. To be candid, the one thing I reserve too little time for is reading literature (somehow interferes with my sleep schedule!).
As your career progresses and life circumstances change, how do you adapt your work-life balance strategies?
It’s important to take out time to manage life-events, the positive ones and the negative ones. It’s ok to take a break. I have had 3 (mini)sabbaticals during my 12-year Amazon career and they are a key reason that I am still working here.
Can you share a personal success story where improving your work-life balance led to better performance or greater satisfaction in your work?
My last 6-week sabbatical leave really fired me up on boosting our NL business. The launch and early phases were energy-consuming, and taking a long 6-week summer holiday revived my energy and led to better results and greater satisfaction.
What advice would you give to someone struggling to find balance between their work and personal life? What is the first step to start?
Cut, cut, cut. Prioritize and make time for the stuff that is really important to you. Not making decisions is also a way of deciding!
What is one thought you’d like to share with other leaders to inspire them to improve the work-life balance within their teams?
You’re in it for the long-term. Careers last longer and are more diverse than in the past, so take a long-term view on your personal health, mental state and development.
I hope you found Roeland’s insights as inspiring and valuable as I did.
Stay tuned for more exciting interviews and content designed to help you thrive both personally and professionally.
Meanwhile, remember to prioritize ‘me-time’ and block off time in your calendar for it.