I'm standing in the corner of the only unoccupied room in Sunnybrook Hospital's emergency center in Toronto, making a phone call. I'm about to say the hardest sentences of my life.
My dad picks up the line. I pause. I don't want my voice to crack, but it does, anyway. "Well, Dad, I have some hard news..."
Our call ends, and the weight of the day crashes down on me. I'm physically sick, but I make it to the bathroom before causing another issue for the busy medical staff to deal with.
I was calling to break the news to my parents that my sister, Rachel, had late-stage cancer, and they needed to get home fast. Less than a year later, Rachel lost her battle with cancer.
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I struggled with the loss of my sister
I knew I wasn't coping well with my sister's death. And so, when a high-achieving friend pitched the idea of meditation, I listened. When a second and third friend brought up meditation, I gave it a go. I felt better. I felt in control.
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Next came therapy and then reading. From here, I went full Tim Ferriss. I spent every free moment reading books on self-improvement. I tried several personal wellness experiments, such as intermittent fasting, polyphasic sleeping, and cold plunges. For months, I'd start my day in freezing cold water, often opting for a dip in a lake on the brink of a frigid Canadian winter.
At the beginning of my cycle of experimentation, I noticed leaps and bounds in the improvement of my mental health. But then it plateaued, and I had diminishing returns.
I realized that all of these experiments had a limit because I was ignoring my job. Back then, I was your typical Type-A, borderline workaholic (OK, total workaholic). I had founded multiple companies, been a relatively early employee at Airbnb, and was in the middle of building an AI company. I worked hard and told myself I'd be happy once I'd "made it."
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When I stepped back, I realized I was over-invested in the future and under-invested in the moment.
I turned my grief toward work
To focus on the here and now, I applied a similar experimentation approach to my job. Instead of a therapist, I got a coach. I began meditating on the job and read dozens of workplace improvement books. I paid attention to my energy levels at work and how I approached tasks. I questioned everything that I thought I knew about productivity.
In my cycle of wellness experimenting, adding activities led to the most improvement. At work, it was the opposite. I always assumed that doing better at work meant adding a better project, a bigger promotion, or a brilliant new job entirely. In contrast, tactics that removed frustrations from the job improved my well-being at work the most.
For example, once I started paying attention to miscommunications, I noticed that I would regularly lose 15 minutes on Monday or half an hour on Tuesday. It turns out the average employee loses a full day of productivity every week due to miscommunications. That meant I could accomplish five days of work in four if I could stop miscommunications.
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I spent weeks looking for a solution and found a simple one used by soldiers that works by repeating back your understanding. It's called a brief back, and all I had to do was take a tactic meant for the battlefield and adapt it to the boardroom.
Brief backs take less than 30 seconds and often save me weeks of wasted effort. Rather than assume alignment, I confirm it before a miscommunication occurs.
Focusing on the day-to-day problems at work helped me stay present in my life — better than any of my personal wellness experiments. I finally felt I had control again. Ultimately, it helped me heal the loss of my sister.
The experiments returned a sense of agency to me
What began as a search for anything that could help me cope with losing Rachel turned into a borderline obsession with emotion and wellness. I couldn't control that I lost Rachel to cancer, but I could control how I responded to the grief of losing her.
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Although I plateaued with the life hacks, tweaking how I work day-to-day has led to endless gains. I still work hard, but now I work better. I feel better, too — and not just at work. The better I do at my job, the more joy I feel in my life overall. I'm less stressed, more driven, and more productive now than ever.
I'd trade everything I've learned to bring Rachel back if I could, but I can't. So, instead, I'm on a mission to share these lessons so you can have my gains without my grief.
