Writing

I had to book a slot for my daughter's bedtime

I'm Humza Yousaf and I'm a recovering workaholic.

I have lost count of the number of times people (me included) have, over the years, boasted about being a workaholic, as if it is a good thing.

If you are addicted to your work, if it preoccupies virtually every single waking second of your life, drains every ounce of your energy and capacity, then what is left for those you love - your friends, your family, yourself?

It has become ingrained into us from our earliest years that to get ahead of the rest of the pack you must work harder and longer than the rest.

This is not a recent phenomenon of course. Fifty-four years have passed since trade union icon and hero of the Upper Clyde Shipyards, Jimmy Reid, made his inaugural Glasgow University Rectoral address. Speaking on the theme of alienation, he famously said "A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings."

Don't get me wrong, I believe in hard graft. I got to where I did in life by making sacrifices, by putting in the hours and then some. But I also know the dangers to your physical health, and crucially your mental health, if you do not find balance in life and importantly create boundaries.

And that starts by taking care of yourself and prioritising your health and wellbeing. By making sure you are taking care of your physical health (I can see my wife, Nadia, giving me a look here). And also, your mental resilience.

Show me a workaholic and I will show you someone who doesn't have their priorities right. An anything-aholic is not good, and that applies to work too.

When I entered Parliament aged 26, I thought the only way I could prove myself, and to get ahead, would be to throw myself into work at the expense of everything else.

I burnt the candle at both ends. I became distant from family and friends.

Even when I was present, I wasn't actually present. I was always thinking about work.

In 2016, I was Transport Minister, my personal life was a mess, and professionally, it is fair to say, I was going through some challenges. And then one day, it all came to a head. I had a breakdown, my mental health imploded.

Eventually, I sought help and got counselling. And it is one of the best decisions I have made in my life.

There were many fantastic lessons and strategies my counsellor offered me, but the best was to remember what is really important in life, and it is just that - life.

Don't live to work, work to live. How many times have we heard this, but not taken any action to actually implement it in our lives.

To help you do that, make sure that you set your boundaries, and protect what is most important to you.

When I was First Minister my office knew not to call me on a Monday between 6pm and 8pm unless it was an absolute emergency. That one slot a week ensured that I could give my young daughter dinner, a bath and put her to bed - we usually managed two out of the three, which wasn't bad.

Even then, I feel terrible when I now look back at the fact that I had to "find a slot" for my daughter's bedtime once a week.

It is a convenient lie we tell ourselves that we are too busy to go to the gym, to go on a date night with our partner, to take the kids to the park and make some memories with them.

If there is one lesson to take from this newsletter, it is to invest time, effort, energy and emotion in the people that you love.

There is not a single person that has passed through life, in the 300,000-year history that Homo Sapiens have been around, who, on their deathbed, wished they had spent an extra hour in the office. They probably regret not spending more hours with their children, wife or mother.

So yes, work hard, in fact work your socks off, but set your boundaries. Trust me, it makes you a better student, employee, or employer, a much better leader, and a much better human being.

If you're where I was in 2016, then please do talk to someone, I promise you, it helps.

Humza

Leadership is lonely

From the minute I became First Minister to the moment I stood down, I was always surrounded by people. My private secretary, colleagues, protection officers who even had to follow me to the toilet - someone was always around. Yet, being First Minister was - by quite some distance - the loneliest job I have ever had. No one else will understand the nuances of leading in the position you hold, and the higher up the tree you climb, the fewer and fewer people there are you can rely on. The buck always stops with you.

I spent the better part of 12 years in government, just over a year of that leading the country. People assume the real lessons come from the big set pieces. The chamber, the summits, the cameras. They don't. They come from the quiet mornings when the choice in front of you has no clean answer and whatever decision you make will have some negative consequences.

It is in those quiet moments, which as a leader are often so rare, that you have to remind yourself about your purpose. Why you are in the office you hold, and what really matters while you occupy it.

That's what I want to write about here.

Most leadership advice is useless. Five habits, a man perched upon the summit of a mountain, a CEO telling you they wake up at 5am to hit the gym every morning. I have no issues with those that wake up early and climb mountains - you probably have a degree of mental clarity many of us strive for. However, I want to write about what leadership really feels like at the top, what I am proud to have done, and what I wish I had done differently. How you stay steady when everything's on fire. How you get a team to follow you because they believe in your vision. How you communicate with an audience beyond your echo chamber.

These skills travel. They work in a boardroom, a classroom, a charity, or a cabinet. During my time as health secretary, I watched a nurse hold a hospital ward together with more authority than some ministers manage in a whole department. Leadership is a craft, and a craft can be taught.

I'll write about the world too. The fights here at home, the ones playing out across the globe, and the slow work of pulling our societies back from the politics of grievance, fear and division. I won't pretend to be neutral about division. I think it's a choice. I think it can be beaten. And I won't pretend diversity is anything other than one of our greatest strengths, because I've seen it be exactly that, up close. In fact, I have lived it.

You won't agree with all of it. I'd be worried if you did. But I'll be honest with you, I'll argue in good faith, and I will also listen with a genuine open mind to those who wish to challenge me.

So here's how it will look. One piece a week. Some weeks a lesson from the inside of government. Some weeks my take on what's happening to the country and the world. One conviction holds the whole thing together: our differences are not a weakness, but a strength.

It's all free. I'd rather build something worth reading than put up a gate before there's anything behind it.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, welcome. Let's get to work.

Humza