Navigating a Demanding Finance Career Without It Taking Over

What if continuing to succeed in finance didn’t have to mean continually giving more of yourself to your career?

More evenings. More weekends. More mental energy. More responsibility. More availability. More of the time and attention you’d rather save for the rest of your life.

When you’ve built a successful career in finance, it can be easy to assume that this is what success requires. And absolutely, there are real demands that come with the work. There will be deadlines, busy periods, high expectations and times when your career needs more from you.

But that doesn’t mean everything your career currently requires from you is inevitable.

You can continue to be ambitious and successful without your time, energy, relationships and life outside work always paying the price for that success.

You can work fewer evenings and weekends without constantly worrying about what it will mean for your performance. You can stop feeling like everything depends on you. And you can build a way of working that allows you to sustain your success for the long term.

If you’ve been wondering how, read on... I will share:

To start, here are three strategies that can help you navigate a demanding finance career without letting it require so much of you.

Strategy 1: Define what success actually means to you... at work and beyond it

Before you change how you work, it’s worth getting clear on what you’re actually trying to achieve.

Think back to why you pursued a career in finance in the first place.

What did you hope your career would make possible for you?

Perhaps you wanted financial security. Interesting and challenging work. Leadership opportunities. The ability to provide for your family. Recognition. Influence. Autonomy.

Whatever your reasons were, there was probably something you wanted your career to give you or make possible.

But as your career progresses, something interesting can happen: investing in your career becomes the goal in itself.

There’s always another promotion to pursue. Another responsibility to take on. Another problem you could solve. Another opportunity to prove yourself.

And without a broader definition of what success looks like, there’s no natural stopping point.

Your career can simply keep asking for more.

More time. More responsibility. More availability. More of your attention and energy.

That’s why I encourage my clients to ask a bigger question:

What does a successful life look like to me right now... not just a successful career?

This isn’t about choosing between your career and your life. And it certainly doesn’t mean becoming less ambitious.

It means deciding what you want all of that ambition and career success to be in service of.

Maybe success means continuing to progress professionally while being present with your family in the evenings.

Maybe it means taking on bigger leadership opportunities without personally carrying more and more of the work.

Maybe it means having the time and energy for your health, relationships, interests and experiences outside work. Not someday, but alongside your career now.

When you have a compelling vision for both your career and your life, you have something more useful to make decisions against.

Instead of asking only, “What will help me succeed at work?” you can begin asking, “What will help me create the kind of success I actually want?”

Because the goal isn’t to give less to your career.

It’s to become much more intentional about what you’re willing to give it, and what you want your career to make possible in return.

Strategy 2: Question what you’ve decided is required to succeed in finance

There are real demands that come with a career in finance.

The challenge is that over time, it can become difficult to distinguish those demands from the additional demands created by the way you've learned to work.

Consider the difference.

Quarter-end may genuinely be demanding.

You personally solving every problem isn’t necessarily required.

Senior leadership may require you to be responsive.

Being constantly available isn’t necessarily required.

A major transaction may temporarily require long hours.

Operating at that intensity all year isn’t necessarily required.

These distinctions matter because when you assume everything about the way you currently work is simply “what a career in finance requires,” there is very little room to change it.

Instead, I encourage my clients to separate two things:

The actual demands of their finance career… and the demands created by how they are thinking about and approaching their work.

For example, maybe you believe you need to be available whenever someone needs you because that’s what a good leader does.

Maybe you continue doing work yourself because it seems faster, easier or safer than delegating it.

Maybe you hesitate to push back on a request because you believe saying no, or even asking someone to reconsider the priority, could affect how you are perceived.

Maybe your standards are so high that work that could be “good enough” has to instead be done perfectly.

Or maybe you have become the person everyone relies on, and being indispensable has become so connected to your professional identity that changing it feels risky.

None of these patterns necessarily look like a problem when you examine them individually.

In fact, many of them may have contributed to your success.

Being responsive, reliable, hardworking and willing to take ownership can help you build an impressive career.

I saw this throughout my own career in finance, and I see it now in my coaching clients. The qualities that get you recognized and rewarded early in your career, like being the person who takes ownership, solves problems and gets things done, can become harder to sustain as your responsibilities grow. What once helped you stand out can eventually leave you carrying far more than you need to.

The ways of working that helped you succeed at one stage of your career may become the very things that make success increasingly difficult to sustain at the next.

This is why the answer isn’t simply to set more boundaries or try harder to “switch off” after work.

You need to understand what is causing work to require so much of you in the first place.

Strategy 3: Redesign how you work so success doesn’t depend on sacrificing yourself

Once you know what success actually looks like for you, and you’ve started questioning what your career truly requires, the next step is to change how you create results.

Because working fewer evenings and weekends doesn’t happen just because you’ve decided you want to.

Neither does carrying less of the workload yourself.

And creating a sustainable way of working requires more than promising yourself you’ll have better boundaries from now on.

It requires practical changes in how you prioritize, make decisions, lead, delegate, communicate expectations and respond to demands.

For example, if too much work continually lands on your plate, the solution may not be finding a more efficient way to get through all of it. It may be becoming much more deliberate about what actually deserves your attention.

If your team depends on you for answers, the solution may not be carving out more uninterrupted time so you can answer everyone faster. It may be changing how you delegate, make decisions and develop your team so fewer things need to come back to you.

If stakeholder requests regularly derail your priorities, the solution may not be working later so you can accommodate both the request and everything you already planned to do. It may be communicating tradeoffs earlier, clarifying priorities or resetting expectations about what can realistically be delivered.

This is an important shift as you become more senior.

One of the things I believe strongly about succeeding as you become more senior in finance is this:

Your success cannot continue to come primarily from absorbing more work.

There are only so many hours you can give.

Instead, your results need to come increasingly through your judgment, prioritization, decision-making, leadership, delegation, and ability to influence the people around you.

That doesn’t make you less committed to your career.

It makes your success less dependent on how much of yourself you have to personally give to it.

Redesigning how you work is the work we do together in my 1:1 coaching program.

We get clear on the kind of success you want your career to support, uncover what is causing work to require so much of you, and make practical changes to how you prioritize, make decisions, delegate, lead your teams and manage stakeholder expectations.

The specific changes look different for every person because every role, organization, team and career journey is different.

But the goal is the same: to continue succeeding in a demanding finance career without letting it consume the rest of your life.

But is this actually realistic if I want to keep succeeding in finance?

You might be reading this and thinking:

This sounds good in theory, but it’s not realistic in my role.

Your company has certain expectations. Your stakeholders are demanding. Your team needs you. Your deadlines aren’t optional.

And you may be right about some of those things - there are real demands inherent in a finance career, and the goal isn’t to pretend they don’t exist.

There will be deadlines you can’t move, busy periods you can’t avoid and times when work legitimately needs more from you.

But before you conclude that everything your career currently requires from you is inevitable, it’s worth getting curious about what actually is.

Ask yourself:

What is genuinely required by my role?

What deadlines, deliverables, expectations and periods of increased workload are simply part of the job?

Then ask:

What am I assuming is required?

Do you really have to be available after hours? Handle that particular piece of work yourself? Say yes to every request? Attend every meeting? Do everything to the highest possible standard?

And finally:

What could I influence even if I can’t change the demand itself?

You may not control the deadline, but you might be able to influence what gets prioritized or deprioritized to meet it.

You may not control the volume of work coming into your team, but you might be able to change who owns what and how much comes back to you.

You may not control what a stakeholder asks for, but you might be able to communicate trade-offs, negotiate timing or reset expectations instead of automatically absorbing the request yourself.

Of course, questioning how much your career requires from you can raise another concern:

If I stop giving so much, will I still be as successful?

When you’re ambitious and have worked hard to build your career, “giving less” can sound a lot like caring less, lowering your standards or becoming less successful.

That isn’t the goal.

The goal is to stop making your personal time and effort the primary mechanism for creating results.

You can remain highly ambitious and committed to your career while changing how much of yourself it takes to create the results you’re responsible for.

Your career can continue growing without the amount you have to give of yourself growing at the same rate.

The goal isn’t to eliminate the demands of a finance career.

It’s to stop automatically meeting every demand with more of yourself.

Your career can ask a lot of you without getting everything from you

A demanding career in finance will probably always have demanding moments.

The aim isn’t to make that reality disappear.

It’s to become much more intentional about what you are, and aren’t, willing to give your career in order to succeed.

That starts with defining the kind of success you actually want, questioning what you believe that success requires and redesigning how you work accordingly.

Do that, and success can begin to look different.

You can work fewer evenings and weekends without assuming your career will suffer.

You can stop feeling like everything depends on you.

And you can create a way of working that allows you to sustain the success you’ve worked so hard to build, for the long term.

Ready to figure out what work may be requiring from you that it doesn't need to?

If this post has you questioning how much of yourself you really need to give your career in order to succeed, my free workbook, Your Career Shouldn't Cost You This Much, is a great next step.

It will help you take the ideas in this post and apply them to the way you're working today.

Inside, you'll:

✔️ Get clear on what success looks like for you at work and beyond it

✔️ Identify where work may be costing you more time and energy than you want to give it

✔️ Uncover one assumption about what you believe success requires from you

✔️ Choose one way to start scaling back without lowering your standards or losing your edge

You don't have to redesign the way you work all at once.

Start by questioning one thing you believe success requires—and finding one way to give work less of yourself.

>> Get Your Free Workbook: Your Career Shouldn't Cost You This Much >>