CHAPTER 4

Make Room in Your Work Life for the Rest of Your Self

by Brianna Caza, Lakshmi Ramarajan, Erin Reid, and Stephanie Creary

Shonda Rhimes, with four television shows simultaneously in production, is an entertainment industry titan. In a recent TED talk, she described her deep passion for her work: “When I’m hard at work, when I’m deep in it, there is no other feeling . . . It is hitting every high note. It is running a marathon. It is being Beyoncé. And it is all of those things at the same time. I love working . . . A hum begins in my brain, and it grows and it grows and that hum sounds like the open road, and I could drive it forever.”

Yet, despite Rhimes’s passion and unparalleled success, her deep, single-minded investment in her ...

Get HBR Guide to Work-Life Balance now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.