The most important element I have found is that I love being in unstructured environments where opportunity is there for the taking. I think I got this startup-bug by participating in and being surrounded by people with entrepreneurial mindsets starting from my last year of high school. My experience in growing ThinkPod Consulting across five years of University was among the highlights of my time in higher education. The feeling of building something up from the ground floor is such a thrill that I had to restrain myself from spending too much time on that as opposed to my actual studies. I have worked across enough projects to understand that I am not motivated necessarily by an organisations’ vision or mission. I don’t mean to say it has zero impact, but I find most of my energy to work harder and smarter when I know my contributions
Insofar as things I enjoy doing most and least, I turn to Nietzsche when he says: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”. My why for most opportunities is best summarised by the hope that the role is multidimensional by nature and that there is the opportunity to help scale the platform from a relatively early stage. In my past experience, I reflect fondly at the opportunities where I was able to play as orchestrator, educator, and advocate.
I used to think that the perfect job as moored away from the rest of life, but if I have made any conclusions from this year of reflection, it is that our lives, personal and working, are best considered in tandem and not independently. I thought work-life balance was what I wanted, but in fact, it is work-life harmony. I feel privileged to have worked for a company that embodied everything I could have ever asked for out of a working culture:
- Work is something you do, not somewhere you go
- A well articulated and singular mission that unites the entire organisation
- An idea-meritocracy where everyone from support staff to the leadership team felt empowered to go above and beyond their job descriptions