This CEO has a ‘1950s family structure in reverse’—her husband does the child care, cooking and cleaning: ‘I do the making money and paying taxes’

Rather than adhering to a tightly defined daily schedule, Antonov’s workdays are best described as “organic” – shaped not so much by the hour as by the flow of the month.

“I really think about my routine less in terms of what is morning to night, and what the rhythm really is throughout the month,” she said. luck.

On a typical day, that means starting work around 8:30 a.m., a comfortable pace by some CEO standards. From there, her agenda is largely determined by her first meeting of the day.

“Every day for me is very different,” she said. “I may have a lot of meetings, but I also try to find time to read, reflect, and connect with people on my team.”

Antonov noted that this flexibility is not accidental, and would not have been possible without help at home. While she has climbed the ladder to now lead a technology company with a market value of more than $7 billion and take care of her family’s finances, her husband has taken the lead at home. Although he worked as a real estate broker and businessman, he was largely a full-time stay-at-home parent while his children were growing up.

Antonov calls this the “reverse family structure of the 1950s.”

“Our children are now officially adults, however [my husband] “I did all the childcare and all the cooking and cleaning and all that stuff, and I’m doing that, making money and paying taxes and that kind of stuff,” she added.

It encourages families – especially working parents – to reach for what actually works for them, rather than default to tradition.

“Giving yourself permission to break away from tradition can be incredibly liberating,” she said. “I feel very lucky to have a career that supports our unusual arrangements, and an amazing husband who takes care of me and our family (and doesn’t make me do the dishes).”

Forget work-life balance, Antonov is a “workavert”

The lack of an overly organized work schedule does not mean that Antonov does not make time for work, on the contrary.

“I don’t have a working life [balance]“They are not separate from me,” she said, adding that she describes herself as neither an introvert nor an extrovert, but rather a “worker,” meaning she is energized by work pressure.

Even when she’s outside of work hours, she finds ways to fuel her curiosity about business, whether that means hearing about an interesting company or solving a problem raised by a family friend.

Antonov is not alone. A number of prominent business leaders have publicly embraced work-centered lives.

For Emma Grade, the idea of ​​work-life balance is not possible for those who seek success on a large scale.

“If you live an extraordinary life and think that extraordinary effort won’t go along with that then that’s somehow crazy,” Grade said. Diary of a CEO Podcast.

Thesonda Brown Duckett, president and CEO of Fortune 500 financial services company TIAA, has echoed this sentiment repeatedly, calling work-life balance “a lie.”

Instead, she takes an active approach to dividing her days to ensure she can effectively juggle responsibilities at home and in the office.

“The truth is, I only get 100% of me, not 110%,” Duckett told LinkedIn News in 2024. “Realizing that I’m not 100% allocated to being a mom, they only get 30%, allows me to be more intentional. So my kids don’t get 100% of all of me. But within that allocation, they get 100%.”

Others take it further. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to answer emails and is always thinking about work, even while washing dishes or watching a movie. He also said he never takes a day off and works seven days a week, including holidays.