Vlad Loktev: commitment

Transcript context

…Awesome. Okay, I'm glad we spent time on that. One last question before we get to very exciting lightning round. We've talked about so many things that have gone really well. You incredibly successful, leader, person, PM. You've worked on so many successful projects, all these skills you've worked on that have been really helpful to you that we've been talking about. I want to take us to Failure Corner. I'm curious if there's a story of failure that you could share where you failed at some point in your career and what that was and how that impacted you, how that helped you potentially in your career? I failed a lot. We've talked about the positives. There were also on my journey, a lot of humbling moments, still have them, lots of failure. I would say the one moment I remember, this was probably in 2018-ish. This was at Airbnb. It was a pretty dark time for me, and I felt overworked, overwhelmed, and I just wasn't a happy person. This was a time where we were still scaling very, very quickly, and I just felt like... I don't know, I wasn't keeping up as much as I was in maybe the earlier days. And I remember thinking to myself like, oh, my God, am I going to tap out in 2018? Is this it for me? And it was just hard for me because I was also a perfectionist. I wanted to help as much as I could. I had great ambitions and dreams that I like. I'm going to keep going with Airbnb for a very long time. And I think in that moment, I kind of hit rock bottom at some point. And I actually remember during that time realizing that so much of my identity was Airbnb and my job. That I had trouble separating myself as a human being from my work. And just realizing that was tough. I lost friends. I lost a lot of relationships. I lost many of my hobbies. I didn't spend as much time as I wanted to with my family and my parents. And at some point I was just like, I think in order for me to be a better leader, I just need to be a much more balanced human being. And that's where ironically, I started spending less time on work and I became way more effective. Because I was just more centered as a person. So I reached out to people who I lost touch with. I spent much more time with my wife and my parents. I started gaming again, and all the little hobbies that I lost along the way. And it just made me happier. And because I was happier, I felt like every hour as a result was much more impactful at the end of the day. So yeah, that's one thing that I think about quite a bit. Like you can't just... It's really great when you pour your heart and soul into something. I think it is very fulfilling, right? Also, you got to think about how to balance yourself as a person. And if you lose sight of everything else in your life, it's a recipe for disaster. I appreciate you being really real with these. A lot of people just share something that's not as real. And so I appreciate you doing that. And I love the advice of if you're going through a really hard time right now and are feeling burnt out and sad about your career, maybe just do less and maybe lean into your personal life more and that will help you be more successful in both.…

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