Dear All,

One of the best bosses I ever had was this guy named Monty. Monty was a VP, Group Creative Director at a then-hot marketing shop that recruited me. During our interview he asked me what was the most important thing to me, which struck me as an odd question at the time. Still, I answered: maintaining my perspective and moral compass. I followed up by asking him the same thing.

He said, “Catching the 6:20 train.”

Monty’s wife was working on their second child. The 6:20 train put him home by 7pm, which meant dinner with the fam, playtime with wifey, etc. The next train wasn’t ‘til much later, which monkey-wrenched his whole night; and he wasn’t havin’ that. The whole time I worked with Monty he never made any big speeches about having a life, he just did. And more importantly, he made sure we did, too.

You didn’t score points with Monty by coming in on weekends—he was rarely there to see you… same for coming in early, staying late or working thru lunch. He just wanted you to get your work done. Save for general deadlines (which he made sure were as reasonable as possible) when you got it done was on you. Plus, he took as much joy in your side projects and hobbies as he did in seeing you serve up brilliant work to a client. Using up your vacations and personal time… he supported that, too. And it wasn’t uncommon to hear, “Everything’s cool, take off early if you want.”

People loved working with Monty and we produced great stuff because of it. (In case you’re wondering, no we never missed a deadline and yes, our clients loved us.) I’m not sure if being a father changed him or if he always had that kind of perspective. But whatever the cause, he had his 6:20 and helped us have ours.

So my question to you is, “What gives you life outside of the office? And does your boss/company respect that? If not, then why not?

I saw an ad once: A man in his 40s, holding a baby, clearly his son. It read: “When you’re 80 years old, you won’t look back and say, ‘I wish I’d worked more weekends’…” I forgot what they were selling but I never forgot what they were saying.

Check your clock and ask yourself, “Is it 6:20, yet?”

(The preceding was an excerpt from KNOCK THE HUSTLE. For more visit: www.knockthehustle.com )