Work Life Balance - Ollie Henderson

Man Up / Man Down

We welcome experienced founder and CEO, Ollie Henderson, who pivoted his career while juggling the pleasures and pressures of raising a young family. Living in North London with his 3 kids and family, he used to run a digital agency. That’s how Volker and Ollie got to know each other.

Finding he needed a change, he exited the business in 2020. Not knowing what he wanted to do, he started writing about what his life should look like. Having had several burn-outs, he decided that his life needed to be more balanced.

But that was easier said than done. The more Oli explored it, interviewing over 1,000 people for his book, Work/Life Flywheel: Harness the work revolution and reimagine your career without fear, he realised we can’t balance work and life. But that’s not what we should actually be aiming for. A bold statement.

Oli believes that work and life need to work together and move things forward for both your career and your life. People need to see progress and how things move forward.

People that are middle aged tend to contemplate changing their career, and question whether they are fulfilled in their job and the time they spend with their family. Does life look like you envisaged it growing up? Are you stuck in a rut doing what you feel you have to do?

Ollie now works less but gets more done. Working flexibly, he works early mornings around his family. In his book he calls it ‘mindset’, thinking about what is important now and what does one want to achieve in the long run?

And sometimes one needs to make a bold decision and to sacrifice family time for a big exit. But what is guaranteed in this world, and what is worth giving up? As David pointed out, we often end up in golden hand-cuffs.

Ollie has a set routine in the morning where he doesn’t take meetings in the morning to get deep work done. By 12 pm he has worked a full day, which means anything he gets done in the afternoon is a bonus. Whilst Volker still loves his early mornings and works all the way through to 7 pm. He enjoys working, but it feels wrong doing that much work sometimes, but why not if you enjoy it?

As Ollie points out, he is now in charge of his week and therefore it makes it easier for managing his time and focusing on the important things, whether that is work or family; he is also a big napper, similar to Volker who couldn’t function without his lunchtime nap 🙂

David pointed out that we might have more of our working life left than we have done already. We will be living a lot longer and the classic 3 stage life of education, work, retirement will not be the same anymore, living a multi-stage life.

The book, ‘The 100 year life’, puts more emphasis on how our lives are changing as we live longer and we highly recommend reading it. Ollie also thinks that the CV is outdated and he discusses this extensively in his book.

Ollie's weekly newsletter and Top 10 Careers podcast, Future Work/Life, provides news and analysis to thousands of people interested in the future of work, covering subjects like creativity and innovation, data and technology, peak performance and workplace culture.

He's the author of the Amazon bestseller, Work/Life Flywheel: Harness the work revolution and reimagine your career without fear. You can find him on LinkedIn.

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