My most successful habit change, by far, has been to go from working 80-100 hours a week to working ‘normal’, human hours. Sometimes I take Fridays off and don’t even work 40 hours a week. Sometimes I work a little more. But the main change is that now I make a choice about how much I’m going to work; before, I essentially always worked because that was what I did. Now I’m conscious of my choices about work.

This change was inspired by a fear for my life, literally. By age 30, I was a hard-driving, financial trader. By 35 I’d been commuting from Chicago to New York (where I lived during the week) for two years. I was exhausted, and I was ill. I didn’t even know my family, nor did they know me. I knew then that if I didn’t change my work habits, I was going to crash and burn. Not only was I burned out and stressed, but my physical, mental, and emotional health were taking incremental hits. In addition, I had lost sight of the definitions of ‘happiness’ and ‘fulfillment.’ I needed a drastic and immediate change.