The Secret to a Healthy Work-Life Balance? Putting Your Needs First.

The following is adapted from The Butterfly Impact by Mark Briggs.

Joe Hurd is an investor, advisor, and mentor to startup technology companies in San Francisco and around the Bay Area. When COVID-19 shut down life in March 2020, he seized the opportunity to work on himself. He stopped drinking alcohol, prioritized at least seven hours of sleep each night, and replaced commuting two hours in his car with 12,000 steps each day.

“It feels pretty selfish, more of just for me, looking inward,” says Joe, who shed thirty pounds between March and December. “That radiated out and manifested itself in so many positive ways, from me not snapping at my family when I got home from work, or being able to take on more projects because I didn’t have that second glass of wine at 9 p.m.”

Joe’s story exemplifies the power of pulling small levers to make positive changes in the world. None of it would have been possible without the pandemic causing shelter-in-place orders that disrupted his usually busy work life. He seized the opportunity. He didn’t waste the crisis.

“I turned inward and said to myself, ‘I want one thing to look back on that I accomplished [during the pandemic],’” Joe says. “I feel selfish; it’s not something I did for society as a whole, or for my company. But getting my personal health in control and taking ownership over my weight, my eating, my drinking: those were making the biggest impact in my work life and then my home life.”

You Can’t Help Others Unless You Help Yourself

Joe learned an important lesson: putting himself first caused a ripple effect throughout his life and his world. By focusing on his personal health and well-being — which felt selfish to him — he improved his ability to show up in the other parts of his life, the parts that don’t feel selfish.

“It’s all part of one continuous circle,” Joe says. “I’ve become much more productive in my work. I’m operating at my peak. In doing so, I’m a happier person, a better employee, and better at home. I am the sum total of those individual parts.”

Before 2020, people strived to find work-life balance. Once the pandemic hit, most were faced with work-life blending, especially if they were suddenly working from home for the first time. Work meetings, deadlines, and deliverables intermixed with home chores, mealtime, maybe helping the kids, and finding your own space. Meanwhile, those who lived alone faced a different challenge: isolation. Millions of people were cut off from the social outlet of the office almost overnight.

The pandemic erased the physical, geographical, and psychological dividers between our work lives and our personal lives. Instead of separate experiences, they became one. The melding of these two worlds forced new challenges — and new opportunities.

Working From Home Freed Up Time — What Did We Do With It?

Time saved from a commute or a work trip became time for something else. Deciding how to spend that time was a new test for many. Some quickly filled up the time with more work, which was understandable, given how many companies and industries were rocked by the pandemic.

That sense of urgency was difficult to control. Others, especially parents, had their non-work time filled up with helping their kids navigate online school or, like me, tutoring algebra. Turning inward like Joe did, however, was the best recipe for growth and managing the crisis. As I reflect back, I learned two lessons about using the extra time I gained in 2020.

First, use extra time to focus on your own health and well-being. The need for extra effort and attention to our own well-being extended beyond capitalizing on a few additional hours each week, thanks to working remotely. The psychological and emotional toll of 2020 hit many people hard with its unrelenting negative news cycle. Consuming large quantities of negative news online can be harmful — you don’t need a mental health professional to tell you that.

The second lesson ties back into Joe’s story: take care of yourself first. The fact that Joe felt selfish for his focus on his own health is not surprising. Self-help is selfish — in a good way, but one that runs counter to most of our culture. We’re raised to believe that giving of ourselves is the ultimate goal, at the expense of investing in ourselves. The opposite is actually true

As author Elizabeth Gilbert said, “None of the other stuff is going to work if the animal that you live in is just a broke-down mess.” Joe was living in a broke-down animal; no longer.

Secure Your Own Mask Before Assisting Others

Think of the instruction on a pre-flight safety briefing: in the unlikely event the cabin loses oxygen, put your mask on first. You’re no good to the rest of your family if you can’t breathe yourself. I spoke with dozens of people in 2020 who had discovered a new drive to take care of themselves first. In most cases, the extra time forced upon us by the pandemic created an opportunity that many, like Joe, had been struggling to create before COVID-19.

That so many of us turned to health and practices to support well-being will long be remembered as one of the silver linings of the pandemic. We can hope that most of us will carry these practices forward and sustain this change in our lives even after the pandemic subsides, and life returns to a sense of normality.

For more advice on finding work-life balance, you can find The Butterfly Impact on Amazon.

Mark Briggs is a management consultant, helping Fortune 500 companies modernize their operations, culture, and leadership by facilitating cutting-edge transformations. Also a speaker, trainer, and consultant in digital transformation and innovation, Mark has worked with groups across the United States, Europe, China, and the Middle East over the past fifteen years. He is the author of three books and a professor of leadership and change management at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.