Is it easy to separate work from my personal life?

It's tough, because I feel like our work is so much a part of our waking hours. If you think about the time you spend awake, for most people at least half of that time is spent at work, doing work, surrounded by colleagues. So I think on a practical level, it's hard to completely divorce yourself from your professional identity. And one of the very first questions that people often ask when you're meeting them, either personally or professionally at an event, is, "What do you do?" And this is something I talked about in my TED Talk. It's just a really hard, separate part of us to completely carve off and to completely compartmentalise.

I think that it's important to have a personal and a professional life, and I don't feel like the two necessarily need to overlap. And I actually think it's healthy for them not to, but there's usually some overlap. And just being aware that your personal life is going to affect your professional life, and your professional identity is going to influence how you feel personally. So I don't pretend that they're separate entities. I think that they're very much intertwined.