What Would Happen if You Prioritized Health Consistently in IB?

Hey all, 

Fellow monkey who is healthy and advocates heavily on sleep, fitness, healthy eating e.t.c. and understand many individuals find it practically impossible to get more than 7/8 hours of sleep a night while in investment banking, much less maintaining daily exercise and healthy diets. 

My question is what would happen if you actually prioritized your health and made sure to get a consistent 7/8 hours of sleep a night, in addition to 30-60 minutes of exercise a day, and healthy eating patterns? These things of course would be prioritized over work to some extent.

Are you going to get fired? Less likely to get promoted? Bottom bucket and pushed out for not being a top performer? Or, will all these things actually benefit you since you'll be more efficient every day relative to others who don't prioritize and develop a (hopefully positive) reputation of someone who works hard and diverges from the pack of "yes men"? 

I get the whole "if you can't handle the hours don't go into IB" but at some point (hopefully now with the pandemic related WFH changes) I feel as though things should be different. Let me know your thoughts.

 

To be honest getting 7/8 hours of sleep a night consistently wouldn't be possible at all unless you either a) pushed back hard on deadlines as a junior, b) don't say anything and don't meet your deliverable deadlines and/or c) don't be responsive to emails/calls in the morning and show up late. Either way, these are all pretty egregious and would say you're probably going to have a pretty serious sit-down in your mid-year leading up to probably getting canned / "reorganized" (at some BBs they just slot you in MO maybe) after a full year. Getting 30-60 minutes of exercise a day is pretty doable though. Just pick a time at night and go. Your senior analyst / associate probably won't think the best of you and it'll come across in your review. So you'll just end up getting bottom bucket.

Becoming more efficient over time is a virtue of putting in the hours to begin with. That's why most people start going to the gym more in their 2nd/3rd years, after having built some trust with peers/superiors, and having done the job well for some time. Wouldn't over think it - saying you'll be "more efficient every day relative to others who don't prioritze and develop a reputation of someone who works hard and diverges from the pack of yes men" is incredibly naive 

 

Not sure why you got MS, I appreciate your perspective and honesty. Have you seen anyone push back hard on deadlines as a junior and if so, what happen to them? Assuming the subsequent ideas you mentioned later in your post? I.e., they were "reorganized" or were bottom bucket (both sound rather harsh but who knows). Obviously it's a bit firm dependent as well. I think it's crazy that as a junior analyst it is more or less frowned upon to push back or voice your thoughts at some firms just because that is the so called norm. I can't imagine not working out for a full year just because some hardo associate is gonna be butt hurt that I'm staying physically and mentally healthy but wouldn't put it past certain people either. 

 

yes, people push back on deadlines all the time, but it's due to conflicting work, not because of the gym/sleep. When you push back, you'll inevitably get asked "why", and if you respond with the fact that you want 8 hours of sleep instead of 6, that's a bad look. People are generally understanding if you've been pulling some vicious nights (all nighters, averaging 2-3 hours for 1-2 weeks straight, and will sometimes even cover for you once the fire drill is over in the sense that you might take a rest day ie. not be at work the entire day to catch up on sleep). You get more flexibility to push back in general after a year of working. i know of one analyst who got chewed out in their mid-year for going to the gym all the time mid-day (amongst other things) and would've gotten fired EOY probably if not for some extraneous circumstances.  

you can work out but itll be at the expense of your sleep. either wake up super early or go super late. and go all weekends. if you're really disciplined you should be able to make it 4x a week without a ton of trouble if you're okay with averaging 6 hours of sleep a day. trying to get 8 and work out is very unreasonable imo

 
Most Helpful

1. You can get 7-8 hours of sleep most nights in IB unless you're on a hot deal. The 7-8 hours may be 2-9am, but it's typically doable 4 to 5 days a week.

2. You can find 30-60 minutes to exercise, the time isn't the issue. It's that you're so mentally/physically tired that it's harder to work out.

3. Tons of people in IB eat extremely healthy 

Or, will all these things actually benefit you since you'll be more efficient every day relative to others who don't prioritize and develop a (hopefully positive) reputation of someone who works hard and diverges from the pack of "yes men"? 

This attitude will get you bottom bucket way faster than taking 30 min to exercise. Efficiency in banking is not possible at a lower level (you don't drive your workstreams at all, there is no prioritizing because work comes in at random intervals, and working quickly just means more comments) and you will regularly have to skip sleep/workout if something is pressing. Saying "Nah" and logging off when you're at a deadline just because you're tired is not going to work.

Things are not different with WFH changes, if you read any of those threads these announcements are not reducing the workload and don't see it changing as long as banks are doing as well as they are now. You can get the bare minimum sleep, work out, but don't go into banking thinking you can game the hours. Everyone works hard.

 

Agree with your points. Seems like many people get their workouts in throughout the afternoon or later hours because morning time is hectic. Sad, since I love my early morning workouts. Seems like a lot of people are working super late hours and that seems to primarily come from the lack of organization by banks. You get a comment at random hours of the day. Are most days people really getting sent emails like "pls turn this by tomorrow morning" at 9pm? That's the only reason why I'd assume everyone is up till like 2am. Sounds terrible and agree that people have had terrible WFH situations but maybe with the push of protected Saturdays e.t.c. things will hopefully get better.

 

Personally in my experience mornings are uninterrupted unless you have a meeting. Reason being that your senior bankers are getting their kids to school, etc, have their own early meetings - they're not getting you comments until later in the day.

If you like your early morning workouts this shouldn't be a problem at all. Generally unless you're on something extremely hectic you can stretch personal time until 9:30 am most days and be absolutely fine. 

 

While a lack of organization exists to some extent, the main culprit of late nights is the fact that this is a client facing job and a somewhat commoditized industry - if your bank can’t get them a deliverable when they need it they’ll hire the bank that can. Also you’ll see when you have to start scheduling team meetings just how chaotically busy senior bankers are. So while frustrating to send a deck for comments at noon and not hearing back until 9pm, for the most part it’s not because they’re dicks it’s because that’s when they get to it.

 

I think one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to IB and trying to work around your health is the fact that you are on call all day. As an analyst, there is really no time that you should be “unavailable” to a senior if they need something. You don’t have to be responding to every email within one minute but you can’t be randomly MIA because you wanted to get a workout in or felt tired at 11. Obviously there are a lot of days where I am not working until 2 am but the fact that there are those 2 am days makes you nervous about being off your computer/sleeping at 11 or 12 at night. You run into the same issues with working out. I like working out later in the day but there is just no way to predict when work will come and you can’t really get into a schedule. I have never been in the office and don’t know what that’s like but I imagine getting into a routine and finding time for the gym would be easier. I think this is one of the hardest things about WFH.

 

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