When I left McKinsey to move back to India, I promised myself two things:
1. No more working late nights.
2. No more alarms – I would wake up when I had enough sleep.
So when I joined a private equity fund in Mumbai, I wanted to make sure that they didn’t work late nights. But I felt awkward asking this directly. So I asked one of the partners, “Where do you have dinner?”
Looking puzzled, he said, “At home, where else?” Now I knew that they went home for dinner – so no late nights 🙂
By then, I was sick of eating dinner in the office and then going home past midnight.
It has been more than a decade since then, and I don’t do late nights – not even at my startup, HabitStrong. I still wake up without an alarm (though I used an alarm for a bit when I was building the habit of waking up at 5 am).
Even today, I hugely value my sleep and health.
If I were to give one piece of advice to youngsters, it would be this – put your health before your job. I did not quite do that for a while. And even today, I regret it.
– Rajan