Inside Upway: Healthy Work-Life Boundaries
Written by: Marta Anadón Rosinach | April 16, 2025 | Time to read 4 min
At Upway, we believe great work shouldn’t come at the cost of personal well-being. That’s why we’re committed to fostering healthy work-life boundaries— because a strong team starts with a balanced life.
More about the Author: Marta Anadón Rosinach
Engineer by training, I spent years at Uber in Strategic Finance and Operations across Europe and the US. I led Upway's US launch—joining the funding team and scaling the e-Bike business. I'm also a proud mom of two toddler boys, a baby girl, and an energetic Dalmatian.
I wanted to take some time to reflect on work-life balance and share with you my thoughts on it, as well as how I have seen it play out throughout my experience and learning journey. This topic has become increasingly important, especially in this post-COVID era, and I believe it's relevant to many, if not most, of you. To that end, I'd like to offer some insights to help develop a perspective on this matter and consider how to effectively address it.
Balance means boundaries
To begin, I must admit that I'm not particularly fond of the term "work-life balance". The reason is very simple: for many of the happiest and most successful individuals I know, work is a significant aspect of their lives. Instead, I believe it is more constructive to think in terms of the boundaries between one’s professional and one's personal life.
Boundaries are designed to help prioritize what matters to each of us individually. It is essential to recognize and respect that these boundaries vary for everyone. For some people, it is reading a book to their kids every night, while for others, it is going for a run every day.
We all need to figure out what we care about and how to make it a priority. For that reason, I don't think that blanket policies such as "no email weekends" or "no professional WhatsApp" actually lead us down a productive path. They can falter as incredibly oversimplified solutions to a very complex problem that we each face every day: how to manage time and, more importantly, stress.
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Self-discipline is worth the effort
Of course, establishing boundaries requires self-discipline, which, admittedly, I have struggled with. I encourage you to create a list of the things you want to prioritize for yourself and, if necessary, discuss it with your manager at your next one-on-one meeting. Together, you can figure out how to make it happen.
The top of my list right now includes: putting my children to bed every weeknight, being present with my family during weekends and holidays (if I have work, I take myself to a separate room), and spending quality time with my husband at least once a week. These are all things I have discussed in the past at work, and they shape my scheduling preferences and work routines. I'm far from perfect at managing my time, and emergencies do arise, but I make a concerted effort each week. But remember that we are all different, so a one-size-fits-all policy likely isn’t the solution.
Fast-moving startups like Upway have many (or all) team members with "on-call" jobs, meaning that when things blow up at unexpected and unhelpful times, they have to deal with them. It is just how life is, and the nature of moving fast. However, we can still be smart about how to manage the stress associated with our work.
The importance of establishing priorities
A few final thoughts to conclude. First, it is not a sign of success to be up all night doing inefficient tasks— tired people make bad decisions and instead, we aim to curate an A+ team that’s prepared to make great decisions. Furthermore, there will simply never be enough hours in the day to get through everything we want to do at Upway. This is exactly the reason why it is so important to set priorities both at work and in your personal life— and to stick to them.
One of Upway’s core cultural values is that we never settle. As a business, we have high standards and want to continue performing at our highest levels, and individually, we each strive to be better all the time.
And we know that all great outcomes typically come from the compounding effect of marginal gains, but this constant work of raising our own bar is outright tough. Taking a page out of Ben Horowitz’s insightful book, the hard thing about achieving hard things is, well, that they’re hard (spoiler alert). But we’re not setting out to do the impossible or squeeze nonexistent hours into the day— our exciting, ambitious goals are fueled by a great culture, which involves setting priorities and work-life boundaries that allow us to continue doing the difficult work ahead.
It’s crucial that companies and teams have your back as you try to draw boundaries between your professional and personal life— your health, happiness, and success matter a lot!
One of Upway’s core cultural values is that we never settle. As a business, we have high standards and want to continue performing at our highest levels, and individually, we each strive to be better all the time.
And we know that all great outcomes typically come from the compounding effect of marginal gains, but this constant work of raising our own bar is outright tough. Taking a page out of Ben Horowitz’s insightful book, the hard thing about achieving hard things is, well, that they’re hard (spoiler alert). But we’re not setting out to do the impossible or squeeze nonexistent hours into the day— our exciting, ambitious goals are fueled by a great culture, which involves setting priorities and work-life boundaries that allow us to continue doing the difficult work ahead.
It’s crucial that companies and teams have your back as you try to draw boundaries between your professional and personal life— your health, happiness, and success matter a lot!
Final Thoughts
Creating healthy work-life boundaries isn't about rigid rules— it's more about knowing what matters to each of us and building habits that support those values. At Upway, we encourage every team member to define their own version of balance, stay intentional with their time, and communicate openly about their needs. When we prioritize well-being alongside performance, we not only do our best work, we also build a culture that lasts and powers our goals.
