EPILOGUE

As I’ve written this book, I have become more and more confident that professionals at all levels should focus on results produced rather than hours worked. It’s the best way, in my opinion, for you to get more done at work while enjoying more time with your friends and family. However, I’ve also been impressed by how much your approach to productivity should depend on your own specific situation. In applying the lessons of this book, you should carefully consider your own stage in life and your organization’s culture.

Your view of the appropriate balance between work and home will depend heavily on your stage in life. If you are a single college graduate working in an investment bank in New York City, you shouldn’t worry about going home for dinner every night. There may even be days—or weeks!—when you don’t get a full dose of sleep.

Nevertheless, once you and your spouse have children, your family life will require more of your time and attention. After you’ve reached this stage of your life, I do believe that you should make it home for dinner every night—and my advice on supportive child care and flexible scheduling at work becomes all the more critical. Once your children are enrolled in school, you may be able to spend less time on child care, but you will still want a flexible schedule so that you can be available for Little League games or piano recitals.

I have personally experienced this ebb and flow of the work-life dynamic. When I began my career as a law professor, I had no wife or family, so I tended to work most of the time. I was gung ho to succeed at all costs. Early in my career, the dean asked me to help out by teaching a first-year course, instead of my advanced seminar on financial institutions. I responded that I would love to teach property or torts, since they meshed well with my interest in economics. But I cautioned the dean that I had never gotten around to taking the second half of the contracts course at law school. Of course, what did the dean need? Another first-year section of contracts. Since I wanted to ingratiate myself with the dean, I accepted the offer. I spent the whole summer getting up to speed on the basic rules of contracts, instead of writing more stimulating articles on current financial issues.

By contrast, when I became chairman of MFS in 2004, I was married with adult children and had more say over my work schedule. Although I initially put in long hours to help stem the regulatory tide against MFS, by the end of 2007 I wanted to spend more time on public policy. MFS was kind enough to let me chair an SEC advisory committee and write two books on financial issues. During those years, I also developed more personal friendships, played more doubles tennis, and became more involved with charitable endeavors. As the years went by, I spent a larger and larger portion of the summer with my wife at our vacation home.

Similarly, to be successful, you have to be sensitive to your organization’s unique trade-off between working long hours and getting results. Some organizations are very geared to producing good financial results with scant attention to how they are achieved. Other organizations give more weight to the hours you log at work than the results you produce and particularly value the time you devote to building a consensus within the organization.

I have learned to operate in both types of organizations. The Fidelity culture was very oriented toward concrete results. In that context, employees could have taken full advantage of my tips to productivity, such as dispensing quickly with small tasks and not attending time wasting meetings. However, this approach can be taken too far. For example, I’ve seen a CEO covertly assign the same project to two executives in the same company—who became unwitting competitors in getting results.

On the other hand, when I was secretary of economic affairs for Massachusetts, I found it virtually impossible to quickly make any major changes in budgets or programs. To be successful in that environment, I had to spend many hours touching base with relevant constituencies: community groups, labor unions, and industrial firms. Yet even within that difficult environment, I was able to organize my time efficiently and delegate certain tasks to my staff in developing support for those changes.

Since there is such a broad range of possible positions on the work-life balance and the results-time trade-off, it is often unclear where exactly an organization stands on these issues—or whether it is willing to make accommodations. I have often been amazed at the many failures of communication among well-meaning colleagues who don’t ask one another really candid questions. As a result, professionals often misunderstand their organization’s expectations on working hours or fail to take advantage of potential opportunities for scheduling flexibility.

For instance, I often see employees staying late at the office, even if it means missing their child’s performance in a school play. They assume that their boss wouldn’t tolerate their leaving early for the day. Yet in many such situations, the boss would have been willing to accommodate their needs. Believe it or not, most bosses understand your desire to spend time with your children or enjoy a romantic dinner with your spouse.

So don’t be afraid to ask questions and voice your concerns to your peers and superiors. Your boss can’t address your needs and desires unless you tell him or her what they are. Of course, some bosses might become defensive or even angry. However, if you politely raise specific points and propose constructive solutions, your boss and/or your organization may be able to help you achieve a more productive work schedule and a more satisfying personal life.

But regardless of your organization’s constraints, remember that you have control over your own mind-set and behaviors on productivity. As I’ve suggested, you can write down your goals, divided into time periods and ranked in order of priority. Then you’ll be in a good position to spend the most time on your highest goals and minimize the time you devote to less significant matters.

Regardless of your employer’s culture, you can adopt most of the specific techniques in this book. For example, you can still respond immediately to important emails and send out agendas before meetings. You can still read off the tops of the paragraphs and compose outlines before writing memos. And you can still plan your career with an eye toward maximizing your options and taking advantage of this changing world. Ultimately, it is within your power to boost your results and reduce your working hours.