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Aim for work-life integration
We’re living a new world today. It’s a 24/7 world. Everyone’s wired all the time. You can give yourself away to your work to the point you never have any time for yourself, or for your families, or for your friends. That’s a really dangerous place to be and you could lose good judgment and not make good decisions. And you can get into more of a productivity thing than a creativity focus. So I think it’s important to have work life integration. You’re not going to have perfect balance, there’s no such thing. But you need to have an integration so you can be the same person at work, at home with your family, and in your personal life and with your friends. You can be that same authentic person and not try to act differently at work or differently in your community. And recognize that you have to carve out time for all of those elements of your life, all those buckets in your life. Because if you don’t, they’re not going to be there when you need them. And you’re going to burn out very early. And then you’ll wonder where all the people around you are that could have helped you at that time. So work-life integration to me is the new phrase.
Make thoughtful trade-offs
Everything is about making trade-offs and doing thoughtful trade-offs. Should I take a vacation and be away from work? Yes, you should. But a lot of people don’t, they forego their vacations. Or they say, Oh, just a couple more hours at work, I get home at nine o’clock, I don’t see my kids before they go to bed, or I’m tied up every weekend. So I think you have to make thoughtful, conscious trade offs. And you have to put some boundaries around your time. Because particularly work these days, and a lot of high tech firms can suck up all your time, and you have nothing left for anyone else in your life.
Or like I used to do, I would travel so much during the week, I come home and get a cold on the weekend and my wife said, Yeah, you always get sick on our time. And I wasn’t really there for people. And so I think putting some boundaries on your life is important, and then thinking consciously about the trade-offs you want to make. I mean, I won’t be able to spend as much time active in the community now. And you have to put that out for later. But that’s something I’d like to do when I free up a little time. It’s a really busy time for work, and my kids really need me, they’re young, and I need to spend the time with them. So if you sacrifice that time, for instance, as your family grows up, you can never make it up, you can’t get it back, that wonderful time when your children are young and are growing up and are active in sports and in school, if you’re not there for them, then they won’t be there for you when they get old.