Bernard Meyer lives with his wife and two daughters in Lithuania.
Bernard Meyer
Bernard Meyer moved to Lithuania from the U.S. just over a decade ago — and says he’s learned one key life lesson living in the country: how to have better work-life balance.
Lithuania, located in northeastern Europe, was named the world’s happiest country for young people in the 2024 World Happiness Report, and the 19th happiest country overall.
After growing up in Miami and going to college in Indiana, Meyer moved permanently to Lithuania’s capital city Vilnius in 2012 and still lives there with his wife and two daughters.
The 39-year-old, who’s a senior communications and creative director at marketing automation platform Omnisend, said he’s noticed a profound difference between work culture in the U.S. and Lithuania — where people enjoy a more “relaxed” and “slower pace of life.”
“I think the work-life balance is something that is controllable within each person,” Meyer told CNBC Make It in an interview.
“So at 5 or 6 p.m. when people turn off, they leave, and they go chill at the bar if they’re relatively young or even if they have kids, they take the kids and they walk around the city.”
“There’s a sense of actually enjoying your life now while you’re still young, while you’re still capable, I think this is something that they [Americans] can learn just to appreciate,” Meyer added.
‘Learn how to have … more of a life outside work’
Americans are known for being work-obsessed which can result in a culture of overwork and burnout. Comparatively, Lithuania ranked as the 11th best country for work-life balance in 2021, according to the OECD.
“Personally, I’m not against 25-year-olds or under 30s who are spending 12 hours a day at work, because it’s a period when you can do that. But once you get past that stage, you should learn how to have a bit more of a life outside work,” Meyer said.
“If you have family, the most important thing is probably your family because you’re working at a place where in five to 10 years, when you’re gone, no one is going to care that you were even there, but your family does,” he added.
Nature — and vacations — are important
One reason people in Vilnius enjoy switching off after work is the abundance of “green areas” in the city, Meyer noted, and also how walkable it is.
After work, “people are relaxed … they’re in the streets like the Old Town, and they’re just walking, or on the scooters, or just sitting at a cafe,” he said.
“Here, they grew up in an environment where nature is important,” he added. “They grew up appreciating nature so they have a city now that is very nature-focused. That means they have this cultural, essential desire to be with nature, and they find it here so that makes them happy.”
Another key distinction he has noticed between Lithuania and the U.S. is how people feel about taking vacations.
“I remember when I was in the U.S., I never had a vacation and I never knew anyone who took vacation willingly,” Meyer said.
However, he now discourages his team at Omnisend from working on the weekends or on vacations.
“One thing I tell them, which I think is very European, is that we don’t work in the emergency department in the hospital. There’s fires but there’s always fires, it doesn’t mean you have to give up your vacation,” he said.