Reconciling "Life is Short" and "Our Work Sacrifices Are Sometimes Worth It"

When Death Remind Us How to Live

I was hit hard by Susan Wojcicki’s death last week at the young age of 56. She had tons of money and access to the world’s best doctors, and yet she still passed away too soon. “You only live once,” “treasure each moment,” people said. I took a few extra hours to work on my genealogy research that night. I’ve always dreamed about working on my family genealogy “when I retire.” Maybe I should start now. Maybe I won’t get a chance to retire… My mom died young-ish from complications related to breast cancer. My obsession with health, fitness, and nutrition stems from my fear of dying young too. I had a mammogram Friday and had a colleague go in for her breast cancer surgery last week. It’s that time of life.

Read the whole post here.

And yet, every day, I sacrifice time with family and friends, time I could spend on personal interests, more exercise, and more artistic pursuits - for my work. I advise many CEOs and CMOs who make incredible sacrifices for their companies and careers all the time. Last year I wrote a post, “Work-Life Balance Guilt is Bullshit: Some Seasons of Life Require Sacrifice,” articulating my frustration at how guilt added on to stress because I felt “bad” at work-life balance as leader at Atlassian. I was commuting a long way, working long hours, frequently traveling, all with little kids at home. All the work-life balance people made me feel like “I was doing it wrong.” But the sacrifices I made then had a substantial return and made many wonderful years possible.

Susan Wojecki’s death brought back my anxiety about the tension between “Enjoy this moment, you could die any day” and “Sometimes I need to make sacrifices to get ahead in my career.” I have always struggled because I want to make a clear decision - leave my job and retire early? Sell our house and downsize to the absolute minimum? Or double-down on my blog and a podcast while inspired by Lenny and Elena Verna? Take a CMO role that’s too good to pass up?

Accepting Opposing Truths At the Same Time

After my mom died, one of the most helpful books I read was The Grief Recovery Handbook. It shared that when someone dies, you often struggle to reconcile their good and bad traits. Often, people over-inflate the good or bad to “decide” how they feel. “He was a mean alcoholic,” or “She was the best mom ever.” Maybe she was the best mom ever, but for many of us, moms are more complicated. One aspect of processing, making sense of, and getting peace with your emotions was to be honest about both the good and bad of each person and ACCEPTING THEM BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. A mom could be unpredictable, stressful, and difficult while also being creative, inspiring, and loving. No person is all one or the other. In life and death, we can accept opposing truths at the same time - and in fact, that is the path to peace.

Work Sacrifices and Wellness

Our daily lives aren’t as extreme as mourning death (hopefully). But my career vs. life conundrum requires the same approach. We can recognize that we “only live once,” “our kids are only young once,” and “no sacrifice is worth our health and mental wellness,” And we can also hold the opposite view — “Sometimes it’s worth making really significant sacrifices - for money, for experience, for freedom, for impact…” One can hold both true at the same time; they can both be true.

The Secret is Seasons

In my own experience, the secret has been to appreciate the seasons of life as variations on sacrifice and renewal, where I take an active role in deciding if the sacrifices are worth it right now.

Early in my career, I worked SO HARD. I worked late every Friday night to finish all the week’s work. I had a fantasy that if I worked more hours than everyone else every day, I would eventually be years ahead in experience. When I was ready to have kids, I took a job at Oracle instead of Atlassian - I could take maternity leave at a larger company without risking the whole company’s revenue targets. It was a little easier than the startup path, and I needed that, especially when I had to nurse my mom. When my kids were a little older, I did go to Atlassian and again worked SO HARD: so many hours, so much travel. Later, I opened my advisory business to have more time for my health and family. Then I decided I wanted my advisory to be exceptional, and am again making sacrifices of time, connection with family, and exercise. Someday, I might take another full-time job and work even harder again. There’s an ebb and flow.

I wanted to write this blog in two columns with opposing views side-by-side. So many of us are really hard on ourselves - we’ve set up an impossible framework of either-or where we can never win. Perhaps the breakthrough is that it’s not one or the other, it’s both.

P.S. Quick Side-Bar on My Geneology Research

When my mom died, she left me a big box of unorganized old pictures. Everyone who knew anything was also dead : ( Before I had kids, I identified a few people but had many mysteries I thought would never be solved. I packed up the boxes and thought I’d open them “when I retire.” This week, my sister was in Sweden with family friends and did a bunch of research in the Swedish archives identifying part of our family tree — and resolving some of my mystery pictures! Maybe it’s time for me to dabble in genealogy now. Maybe it doesn’t have to be all-or nothing…

P.P.S. My mammogram came back clear. Fingers crossed…

---

Carilu Dietrich is a former CMO, most notably the head of marketing that took Atlassian public. She currently advises CEOs and CMOs of high-growth tech companies. Carilu helps leaders operationalize the chaos of scale, see around corners, and improve marketing and company performance.

---