Chapter 18 — Exercises
These help you drop overwork-guilt and set healthy boundaries while keeping your work ethic. Sample answers for closed items follow.
A. What Would You Do?
Scenario 1: Leaving on time
Your work is done well at 5pm, but your instinct says staying late shows dedication. You: - (a) Stay late to be seen, even with nothing pressing. - (b) Leave on time with your work done — results matter more than face-time here. - (c) Judge colleagues who leave as uncommitted. - (d) Stay and quietly resent everyone who left.
Scenario 2: Unused vacation
You have 12 unused vacation days expiring soon; you feel guilty taking them. You: - (a) Let them expire — taking them seems uncommitted. - (b) Take them — they're part of your compensation and rest improves your work. - (c) Take one day and feel guilty all of it. - (d) Work through vacation "just in case."
Scenario 3: The 10pm email
A non-urgent work email arrives at 10pm. You: - (a) Drop everything and reply immediately. - (b) Reply tomorrow morning — after-hours boundaries are normal in most Western settings. - (c) Feel anxious all night about it. - (d) Assume you must always be available.
Scenario 4: Two bosses, all your time
Your home-country manager expects 24/7 availability; your Western team is offline on weekends. You: - (a) Try to satisfy both and burn out. - (b) Protect yourself — lean on local norms, set expectations, don't let both cultures each claim all your time. - (c) Ignore the Western norms and stay always-on. - (d) Say nothing and quietly collapse.
Scenario 5: An aspect home does better (new)
You came expecting "Western balance" and found your US workplace worse than home — barely-taken vacation, 10pm emails, desk lunches. You feel pressure to join the overwork. You: - (a) Absorb the hustle-guilt and overwork yourself to fit in. - (b) Recognize US balance as a genuine dysfunction (not a misunderstanding) — keep your value: take vacation, set boundaries, deliver results without martyrdom. - (c) Loudly lecture colleagues about how home is better. - (d) Factor balance into where/for whom you work, since it varies hugely within the West.
Choose and justify each. Why does Scenario 1(a)'s "staying to be seen" often backfire in the West? Why is Scenario 5 different from most cases in this book?
B. Decode This
- "PTO" / "annual leave."
- "Use it or lose it."
- "I'm OOO next week."
- "Right to disconnect."
- "I'm taking a personal day."
- (new) "Let's protect your focus time."
- (new) "No need to reply tonight."
C. Translate Between Cultures
Task 1 — From face-time to results. Reframe each "long-hours = dedication" behavior into the Western results-focused equivalent: 1. Staying visibly late every night. 2. Never taking vacation to show commitment.
Task 2 — Set a boundary. Write a polite reply to a non-urgent message that arrives after hours, protecting your evening without seeming uncommitted.
Task 3 — Keep a value home does better (new). Pick one balance practice from your home culture (the real lunch, the protected evening, the taken vacation) and write how you'll keep it in your new workplace without seeming uncommitted.
D. Culture-Shock Journal
- Guilt. Do you feel guilty leaving on time or taking vacation? Where does it come from?
- The gap. Is your workplace more US-style (intense) or Europe-style (protected)? How does it compare to home?
- Best of both. How can you keep your work ethic and protect your life — rather than absorbing the exhaustion of both cultures?
- What's ahead, not behind (new). Elena reframed Lisbon's balance as something ahead (to protect), not behind. Is there a value of yours the West (or the US specifically) gets worse than home? How will you protect it?
E. Ask a Local
Ask a colleague: - "Do people here actually take all their vacation? Is it weird not to?" - "Is it expected to answer email in the evening or on weekends?" - (new) "How does balance here compare to other places you've worked?"
Record the answer; note the US–Europe difference if relevant.
F. Self-Assessment
Rate 1–5: 1. I judge my work by results, not hours of presence. 2. I take my full vacation without guilt. 3. I set after-hours boundaries when appropriate. 4. I match my team's real norms (not my assumptions). 5. I protect my life without abandoning my work ethic.
Note date and scores. (Appendix J collects the book's self-assessments.)
Sample Answers & Discussion
A: 1 → (b) — results > face-time; staying to be seen (a) can signal poor time-management, and judging others (c) misreads efficiency as laziness. 2 → (b) — take your vacation; the guilt is a cultural dysfunction, not a virtue. 3 → (b) — after-hours boundaries are normal in most Western settings. 4 → (b) — protect yourself; don't let two cultures each claim all your time. 5 → (b)/(d) — US balance is a genuine dysfunction (not a misread); keep your value and factor balance into where you work. Why 1(a) backfires: in a results-focused culture, visible overwork can read as inefficiency or poor workload management, not dedication. Why 5 differs: most cases say "you're misreading a coherent system"; here, your home culture may simply do it better.
B — Decode This: 1 = paid vacation days. 2 = take your vacation by year-end or forfeit it. 3 = "out of office" (away, not reachable — and that's fine). 4 = legal protection (France et al.) of your right to ignore work messages off-hours. 5 = a day off for yourself (increasingly normal). 6 = blocking time for concentrated work (a sign focus is valued). 7 = a genuine release from the after-hours expectation — take it at face value.
C — Task 1: 1 → "I focus on delivering results within my hours; I manage my workload to finish well, not to stay late." 2 → "I take my vacation to stay rested and effective — I come back doing better work." Task 2 model: "Thanks for this — I'm logged off for the evening but I'll take care of it first thing tomorrow." (Polite, bounded, not uncommitted.) Task 3: the point is to keep the practice and keep delivering results, so the boundary reads as healthy, not slack.
D, E, F are personal — your honest reflection is the answer.