I just started trying to blog something happy or funny that happened to me lately. I tried and I tried… but I gave up. Today I am taking a break. Today I am not going to hide my mood or my feelings and I’m going to blog however I feel. Yes it’s true…. I’m not always as bubbly or as happy as I appear on the outside. On the inside, there are times when I get really really bogged down with work and thoughts of work.
Many people have asked me if I work long hours and I often don’t really know how to answer that. When Nuffnang first started out 3 years ago with a staff count of 4, I worked many many hours on doing things since I had to do everything myself then. Today the whole Netccentric Group has about 60 full-time staff and there are structures and systems in place so that takes a load off me. I don’t work tediously anymore…. but I feel I work a lot harder mentally. I don’t know how to explain it but I’m going to try. These days I don’t stay in the office till really late. I wake up early in the morning, go to the gym and by the time I reach the office, most of the Nuffies are already there. I leave often after a lot of them leave but I’m hardly the last person to leave the office.
When I leave the office though, work doesn’t stop for me. In the car on the way to pick my girlfriend up for dinner, I’m talking on the phone about work. When I’m in the shower at home later in the night, I’m thinking about work and before I sleep I’m thinking about work. Heck sometimes I think about it so much that I have trouble sleeping. It just dawned on me today that 70% of the dreams I remember having were of work. Can you imagine that? I don’t dream about unicorns, or flying in the sky or rainbows.. I dream about work. What kind of “work thoughts” do I really have though? Well some of them of excitement… you know that we’ll be doing new things or coming up with new ways to solve problems. Some of them though are of stress and worry. Ming and I both admitted to each other once that whenever we checked our emails our hearts would always beat a little bit faster for fear that an e-mail might come about something bad that happened in the company and we would have to go put the “fire” out.
Back then when we had 4 staff, things were a lot more lighter. We had less things to worry about. Less costs, less problems… and people kind of expected a little less from us and were certainly more forgiving of any mistakes we made. Today, our standards have gone up soo much higher. I mean even if you compare our Powerpoint Presentations from 3 years ago to now, you would see leaps and bounds of difference in standard. Before it used to be okay to make one or two small mistakes. Now even the smallest mistakes are unacceptable.
Back then when we were a growing company, we had so many things we knew we had to improve on and they were easy to act on. Now it seems we’ve picked all the lower hanging fruit and whatever else we need to change for the better takes not only time but effort and resolve. There is also so much more at stake. Before I used to tell myself that if we failed, I would just go back to finding a job. Today if we fail, 60 full-time staff who earn a living from the company Ming and I started will lose their jobs and their lifestyles. 60 people that are the best people we could ever want and 60 people whom we all love!
So my head really feels a lot heavier these days which is why sometimes I wish I could just escape for a while and go for a holiday but even then I grow tired of because I already travel so much for work. It’s true… the grass is always greener on the other side. Some people I know wish they could be doing their own business and all but believe it or not, sometimes when my head is heavy with all these thoughts I think about how it would be like if I was just working for another good company. The worst that can happen if I make a mistake is I get fired and I find another job.
Whenever I run into a lot of stress though I think of what Donald Trump once said… that whenever he was faced with any major problems, he thought of the bigger problems of the world: People in Africa starving or people who’re suffering from the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. it was when he thought about these bigger problems of the world did he then realize how small his problem is. I do that… and it actually does help put things in perspective for me. I don’t just stop there. I then count my blessings. The good people I have around me, the fact that I can have food on the table every day… and I have a job that while very stressful at times is the thing I really really love doing for now.
I feel better already…. thank you blog!
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space