As part of Silicon Flatirons’ Entrepreneurship Initiative, Phil Weiser, Professor of Law and Telecommunications, is engaging in a series of interviews with local venture capitalist Brad Feld on topics ranging from financing strategies for start-ups to the nature of innovation to managing work-life balance. Readers of Brad’s blog already appreciate that his insights and wit are not to be missed. This third session will focus on the challenges and importance of finding life-work balance.
For entrepreneurs, lawyers, and other professionals, work-life balance is often a topic that individuals plan on thinking about when they have time. For Brad Feld, this topic “took me 15 years, a failed first marriage, and my current wife (Amy Batchelor, Wellesley Graduate) almost calling it quits for me to realize that I had to figure out what ‘work life balance’ meant to me.” This recognition led to Brad’s commitment to a series of rules, which evolved into a set of habits that include:
- Spend Time Away
- Life Dinner
- Segment Space
- Be Present
- Meditate
Notably, Brad’s view on life-work balance is not that working hard is not important; rather, it’s that “balance improves the quality/quantity of work that you can get done and he has become more effective at accomplishing stuff.” In this session, we will discuss the challenges about finding life-work balance, developing strategies to both work hard and work effectively as well as how to define success not just in work, but in life.