Community Spotlight: Balancing Priorities

October 12th, 2020

Community Spotlight: A series highlighting Aspire to Her community members and their experiences early in their careers.

Who we’re featuring this week: Sabrina Khan
Position: Account Strategist at Google; Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Project Healthy Minds

As the co-founder and current Chief Strategy Officer of Project Healthy Minds as well as an Account Strategist at Google, how do you successfully manage your time and energy between your two roles? How do you prevent burnout?

Honestly, it took a lot of time to get the balance right. I’ve had to do a lot of reflection to understand how I spend my time and identify natural patterns in my workflow. From that, I’ve created a schedule that naturally complements those patterns. For example, Mondays and Fridays are my maintenance days: checking emails, scheduling calls, updating project statuses, setting goals for the week, etc. Tuesday & Thursday are for “core” work days, and Wednesdays are for project work and “overflow” from Mon & Tues. In that schedule I’m also making sure to block time on my calendar for daily breaks to get off the computer & step away.

Something else that has really helped me was identifying the things that I really enjoy and want to do more of, as well as the things that I don’t like (or am frankly not good at) and want to do less of. The best advice that I got from a previous manager is that you can’t be great at everything, so stop trying to be: find ways to automate & complete the things you don’t like while leaning into & finding opportunities to stretch in the things that you do. That way, you’re intentional about how you spend your time, and ideally spending it on things that you truly enjoy. Now, before diving into any project or task, I take the time to understand its components with that framework.

What is your advice for someone who is in the early stages of their career and struggling to balance multiple priorities?

In the early stages of my career I thought I had to make work my #1 priority in order to stand out amongst my colleagues, all of whom were incredibly smart and hardworking people. I felt that I had to show I was capable and dedicated by spending hours and hours of my free time working. I also had this unrealistic expectation for myself that I had to be good at everything from the very start, which caused a lot of unhealthy pressure. Work became unmanageable. I had to have an honest conversation with myself about setting boundaries and realigning my expectations. The first step was realizing that work is not the end all be all. There will always be more that you can do. But, putting yourself (and your mental health!) first is the most important thing. Always. I used to just power through the days, sometimes sacrificing sleep and my well being. I found I was not able to give my full attention and self to that work. And I frankly wasn’t happy. Looking back, I probably ended up spending more time on trying to get the work done than if I just took a break, refreshed, and then resumed the next day. It’s not selfish to put yourself ahead of work. You’ll thank yourself later.