Through the example of his excesses during his years at IronPort, Scott Weiss comes to a wise conclusion:
In retrospect, I believe that I could convince the hardest working CEOs that having some real life balance by investing in your important relationships will make you a better CEO. When you are out of balance, it affects your stress, judgment, and ultimately becomes another destabilizer just when you need to be the most put together. I also believe this change is actually a much better example of leadership than the one I was exuding. When a leader shows the way toward getting things done and balancing their life, it sets a much better example for everyone else in the company who struggle with it too.
Reading the whole article is quite harrowing. Scott's wife deserves a medal for putting up with all this.
At the end of the day, my advice is to reject the Aztec Principle of work: that there must be sacrifice and hardship so that the sun may rise tomorrow. Instead, realise that a healthy, balanced life is a much better starting point for success than an excessive, unbalanced, unhealthy life.
