Obama Says Full Work Devotion Can Be Normal, Then Family Returns
Barack Obama said that people who achieve great goals cannot always maintain a balance between work and family, and named a rule he kept while serving as president.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama said that a balance between work and personal life is not always attainable for people who achieve high results. According to him, it is sometimes perfectly normal to devote oneself entirely to work for certain periods and only then return to family.
Obama expressed this view on The Pivot Podcast in 2024. Earlier, at an Obama Foundation event in 2019, he spoke about how his family endured the most difficult periods of his career. He is now 65 years old. The most vivid memory is the exhausting campaign of his first presidential race, which lasted about 18 months. During it, the main household duties fell mostly on Michelle Obama. Obama himself said he would remember not the vote counts or speeches, but his family.
At the same time, he stressed that it is important for spouses to share sacrifices fairly. The couple must negotiate compromises and maintain a balance of what he called "fairness" between partners. This issue, he said, cannot be resolved with a one-time decision, because the family's needs change along with each spouse's career stages.
While president, Obama followed a clear rule: every evening at 6:30 p.m., the family gathered together for dinner. It was a mandatory ritual, even when other matters demanded attention. Such a daily anchor, in his view, makes it possible to stay connected with loved ones even in the most intense years.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has taken a similar position, believing that the classic work-life balance does not suit winning startup founders. He makes an exception for the family dinner, after which he returns to work. Hoffman spoke about this in a startup course at Stanford University in 2014. For contrast, the sources mention former Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan, who, they say, is very disciplined about work-life balance.
These statements open a broader discussion about how modern leaders, politicians and entrepreneurs combine ambition with family obligations, and whether it is possible to demand balance from people whose work requires full dedication in certain years.
Source: fortune.com
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