Growing Your Career: Let your ambition light you up, not burn you out | Tarveen Forrester

Modupe Akinola (0:00)

Hey, listeners, we're dropping another playlist this month. And this one is for anyone who's on the job market right now. Making a career change is never easy. But I think a lot of us are finding it especially hard at this moment, because it can feel so impersonal. There are more AI screenings, more trying to connect over Zoom. It's like the human part of the process is slowly getting filtered out. That's where these talks come in. I've picked out a line up full of tricks and tips to help you stay calm, stay true to yourself, and advocate for what you want and need. The job hunt can be opaque, overwhelming and anonymizing. So let's shed some light on it together.

I'm the kind of person who always wants to be in multiple places at the same time. Between teaching, conducting my own research, consulting, and giving talks to companies, and at conferences across the globe, I have that kind of calendar that would give most people a panic attack. I've been doing this and studying stress long enough to know that this jam-packed schedule is a recipe for burnout. I love keeping busy, but I hate feeling like I'm being overly ambitious because that can come at the expense of my well-being. But what if it doesn't have to be this way?

I'm Modupe Akinola. This is TED Business, a podcast from TED. Our speaker today is Tarveen Forrester. She oversees workplace culture at Kickstarter, and she's here to tell us about sustainable ambition. The secret, she says, boundaries. Then after the talk, I'll give an example of how I establish boundaries in my own life. But first, a quick break.

And now, Tarveen Forrester takes the TED stage.

Tarveen Forrester (2:04)

Like many of you, I was enamored by the hustle culture. As a VP of people and multi-time HR executive, I've led many teams and companies through burnout. I've also gone through it myself. Turns out a lot of us have. Studies show that at least one in four employees globally have experienced burnout. Burnout sucks. If you know, you know. But you know what's worse? It's dimming your light and your ambition. You see, your ambition is a very special gift. It's that fire in you that keeps you aspiring for more and pushes you to your fullest potential. I believe with the right tools, you can nurture your ambition and avoid burnout. This all starts with learning to set and maintain your boundaries within work, life and your relationships. Now, boundaries like kind of have a bad reputation, right? Some people think of them as an excuse to work less. Others as a reason to say no to everybody and everything. And some even believe they minimize your dreams. But boundaries are actually what empower you to do more and do it better. Boundaries give your ambition a sense of rhythm and pace. So you can create what I call sustainable ambition. So what's the secret sauce? How do we effectively set boundaries? Well, it starts with this hard truth.

You can't do everything and avoid burnout. I'll paint the picture for you. It's four weeks away from that big deadline. You have mouths to feed, a home to maintain, workouts to attend, and then boom, the inconvenient thing happens.

Your child is sick, you're rushing to the vet, or the worst, you receive bad news that rocks you. You're now sitting there in this predicament of trying to figure out, how am I going to do it all?

Well, guess what, you're not. Before you can even begin to tackle your goals, you have to make peace with the reality that you can't do and be everything, especially in these moments of the unknown. Pushing yourself to the point of unsustainability is an extremely toxic cycle. And unsustainability and unrealistic expectations are exactly where burnout starts. So let's talk about how you can create a system to support your ambitions and your boundaries. First, you have to get crystal clear on your non-negotiables. It's up to you to decide what tasks and what habits are essential for you when you hit those high-pressure moments. A non-negotiable could be something like meditating 10 minutes a day, getting to your kids' baseball game, or prioritizing that workout. As it does, life be life-in and it will throw you another curveball. And when it does, I want you to ask yourself, how am I going to prioritize my non-negotiable? What is the trade-off? A trade-off is typically something like rescheduling a social activity, canceling your golf lesson. This one's a little controversial, but maybe you're not watching Sunday night football. I know. I know it's football season, I know. At the end of the day, we can't control all the things that are happening around us, but we can control how we react. So it's up to us to accept these trade-off moments, adapt and move forward.