Work and Life

Questions and model answers

1. How do you know when to stop working for the day?

   Badly, honestly. I don't really have a finishing time, I have a sign — when I catch myself reading the same paragraph three times without any of it going in. That usually turns up about an hour after I should have stopped. What actually helps is having an end I don't have to decide on. Leaving the building at six works, because then it's not up to me. Setting an alarm doesn't, because I just turn it off. Telling someone I'll meet them works too. I'll keep that one. The bit I've never sorted out is that stopping feels like quitting when the work isn't finished, and it's never finished. So I still stop badly, just earlier than I used to.

2. Would you rather have fixed working hours or complete flexibility?

   Fixed, which people find odd. Flexibility sounds great but it means deciding when to work about forty times a week, and every one of those is a small drain. If I can work any hour, then every hour is one I'm choosing not to work in, and that follows me around all day. Fixed hours are worse maybe four times a year and better the other three hundred. The four are real — a delivery, an appointment — but I can just ask for those. The catch is that fixed has to actually be fixed. If nine-to-five turns into eight-to-seven whenever something is urgent, you get the worst of both — you're still tied to the hours and you never get the ending.

3. Tell me about a period when the balance went wrong.

   The three months before a deadline last year. It didn't feel dramatic at any point, which is why it went so far — I cancelled one thing, then another, and none of the individual cancellations seemed unreasonable. What I noticed eventually was that I'd stopped being invited to things. Not dropped, exactly. People had just updated their model of whether I'd say yes. That was the part that frightened me, because I could work harder to catch up on sleep and I couldn't work harder to undo that. It took about four months of deliberately saying yes to things I didn't much want to do. What got me back in was saying yes to a Saturday thing I really didn't want to go to.

4. Should companies be required to stop contacting staff outside working hours?

   Required is strong, but I'd support it, and mostly because voluntary versions don't work. Any policy that depends on an individual choosing not to reply puts the cost on the most junior person in the thread, who is the least able to absorb it. A rule removes the choice, which is the only reliable way to remove the pressure. The objection is that some work genuinely spans time zones, and that's real — but that argues for exceptions, not for leaving it to individuals. What I'd be careful about is the difference between sending and expecting. If my manager writes at ten at night because that's when she thinks, and nobody is expected to read it until morning, I don't think anything is wrong.

The Korean translation, the expression breakdowns, the reusable frames and the common-mistake notes for these four questions are in the book. The recording and this transcript are free, here and on YouTube.