A Conversation With Google’s Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat | Foreign Affairs

The chief financial officer at Alphabet (formerly Google) talks to Foreign Affairs about the future of the global economy, the differences between Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and the political climate in Washington.

I think work-life balance is a trap, because I don’t think you can ever be balanced. If you struggle to keep things perfectly aligned, you’ll always feel like you’re failing somewhere, and that’s not a healthy way to go through life.

What I encourage people to do instead is think about a mix. Think of your life like a kaleidoscope. If you had even amounts of yellow and blue, it’s pretty boring. What’s important and what makes life really rich and exciting is to have lots of different shapes and colors that change over time.

So sometimes I will be all in work, and other times I will be all in family. And then there will be the mix in between, and it changes throughout life. And if you don’t give yourself permission to have it changing constantly, I think you’ll find that you can’t ever make it work.

I think my kids are proud of what I’m doing at work. When they’re growing up, and you’re trying to juggle everything to get it to work, you’ll find that they understand it. And you’ve got years to go until you have to worry about it.

Source: A Conversation With Google’s Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat | Foreign Affairs

UA-2750533-1