MBB folks, can you please shed some light.. how do you all manage to be the top of the the top? Get so much amazing work done, volunteer, have organized lives, workout, have a social life? Like how..

likefunny
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Why is your perception that their work-life balance is great? Mine is just that they have life partners who are supportive of them and the lifestyle it affords, or are alone. As for volunteer work, people who work for regular ass companies and put in 40 hrs/week do way more. The MBB workload is grueling, which is why most people only stay a couple years and then pivot to something else using the experience and network gained. It's not as bad as IB but little is.

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If it helps you feel better, I have lost 90% of my personal life since joining my MBB

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A couple thoughts:
1) We don’t do all those things well 🙂
2) During the week we basically just work. Plus sneak in a couple workouts and some time with the family
3) We tend to jam the weekends full because that’s the only chance we get to “live”

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Im Not in MBB but I think you might be only seeing the glamorous parts. E.g. have you been to their homes? It may also be in a mess, or they have a supportive partner, or they hire a helper to clean. You might be holding yourself to unreal standards

likefunny

Yeah I can attest to this. Remember that what you ‘see’ on social media, etc is rarely accurate of real life.I’d spend less time putting yourself down relative to others and more figuring out what you can do to give your life more balance and purpose (I hypocritically advise as I wake up in the middle of the night unable to sleep from the anxiety on my study ;)). I promise that folks rarely have it together as they seem, OP

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Does one get all of those things done and stay on top of everything? I feel like I can barely manage just my job in consulting. I feel so burnt out. I feel like my personal life is a mess - home is a mess, finances, I constantly feel stressed out. What can I do? Help!

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OP, I won’t generalize this for all MBB folks but I do manage to do most of the stuff you mentioned. I work around 45-50 hours / week, and make sure that my teams are also not burning. Workout 5-6 times, travel a lot (Pre covid) , organize dinners; go out , read etc.

The only way it has worked for me is because I set boundaries very aggressively during work for myself, towards clients and also partners. I rely heavily on 80-20 approach, and give my team a lot of free hand in driving content. Also, I make sure that the team gets a lot of flexibility around the time they work so they can take breaks in between to de-stress which helps in productivity.

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Here are som tips:

Churn reducers:

- Don’t make additional slides for internal meeting; every we make should be output driven focused on client value
- Formatting takes last priority for internal discussions
- Align goals with partners early, even better align with clients regularly to not face surprises
- Learn to not care about minute details
- Try to work of a shell deck, and make your team work of it as well so everyone always knows the overall structure
- Formulate an hypothesis early and work backward
- Trust your team mates to deliver, give them free hand.

Stress reducers:

- Take regular mental breaks (cook, walks, proper lunch and dinner break, workout etc)
- Don’t work from flights or cabs
- No weekend work, as a rule
- No late night work, as a rule (things can wait)
- Don’t count time in or time out or number of hours online; always work based on output and expect same from your team

Hope this helps! :)

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How do we manage work life balance so well? 🤣

likefunny

I only get 1-2 of those things done

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In the 2 yrs i spent at mck i had to drop the majority of all the fun, social, active things in my life because the work took over almost all of my time. Many (but not all) of my colleagues had the coolest hobbies etc before starting, but had to cut down or drop them after joining. Also, there are lots of burnouts from trying to manage it all. I’d second the other comments here that social media is not a real pic of peoples’ lives. Figure out what is important to you and solve for that. Dont look at what you think others have. We cant all survive on 4 hrs of sleep per night ;)

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80/20 is the name of the game. My personal life is not in total shambles, but I have to outsource nearly everything (cooking, cleaning, nanny, tutors) and be very intentional about time off (date night, taking vacation time, planning weekend activities, etc.). Lots of planning with multiple layers of schedules.

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1) Moved back with my parents with wfh because I basically didn’t have any time to cook, do laundry, clean, etc
2) I’ve put on 16kg the first year I joined the firm
3) Again the first year, I was so tired at the weekends that I just slept through them. Required an intervention to get back into some sort of scial scene. Obviously nothing social on weekdays
And after all of this 4) almost got an issues rating (path to CTL), barely improved my performance to average now

Nothing is what it seems like from the outside

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