They say, “All things are possible if you just believe.” Well, according to Indiegogo’s Canadian marketing manager for tech and design Steve Tam, that statement isn’t always correct.
Betakit reported that during his keynote speech at the #Firesideconf, Tam shared that work-life balancing doesn’t exist afterall:
“I hate talking about work-life balance because it implies that there are two finite sides of this scale, like you have to take away from work to get life or you have to take away something from life to do better at work.”
Tam also revealed how he manages to handle his time:
“Sometimes I can be on my phone in work mode, but I can also be in personal mode. As I’ve started to remove barriers between what means work and what isn’t work, each of these spaces in your life start to become more enjoyable, so you don’t look at your office and think ‘I hate this space’.”
The media outlet also noted Tam explained that people should commit to a one-year ‘mastering yourself’ program, where they ask themselves how they would want to improve their work or life, and try to integrate those goals into their day-to-day life. He also commented on companies that encourage their employees with various tactics:
“For a lot of companies, culture means having a ping pong table and going to the bar every Friday, but I think it runs much deeper than that. Whether you’re a two-person team or a 200-person team, you need every person to be the best version of themselves. I think that companies that empower their employees are the ones that are growing the fastest.”
He went on to share that companies that giving employees room to grow is the start to building company culture:
“Everyone wants a vacation until you spend a month on the beach and think that it’s boring, and everyone wants to work remotely until they realize it isn’t the best. Healthy workspaces give employees space to learn what’s important to them and not assume everyone knows what they want. You need the freedom to do what’s important to you so you can feel fulfilled and inspired and bring that energy back to your workspace.”
Tam also offered up his four key tips for his “mastering yourself” program:
- Surround yourself with people who live the life you want to live: “I went through a massive friend turonver in the last four to five years, and a lot of people are unhappy with me,” Tam said. “It also means that the new group that I’m spending my time with are doing things that I admire and I’m passionate about, and it helps me to push my boundaries.”
- Create physical spaces that you want to be in: “I challenge you to take that passion you put into that space and do that to other spaces that you spend a large part of your day in.”
Create free spaces of time: “We’re really good at spaces already. We’re good at working and not working. Try to get better at that space in between working and not working. I’ll find myself in an amazing conversation and coming back to that scene a few months later, and you start to expand the space where work is because we let it fall into the time where we’re not working.”- Focus on improvement in the present: “Push your current job and current position as far as possible until whoever you report to says ‘I don’t know if this is the right fit anymore’,” Tam said. “We’re very complacent in our current situations and we don’t push the boundaries of the jobs that we’re in because we always think we’ll find it in the next job.”
