Let your ambition light you up, not burn you out | Tarveen Forrester
TED Business
TED
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Burnout shouldn’t be the price of success, but setting boundaries at work is easier said than done. Tarveen Forrester, who oversees workplace culture at Kickstarter, shares practical strategies for protecting your time and cultivating “sustainable ambition,” so you can crush your goals — without letting them crush you. After the talk, Modupe urges you to come up with a library of your own "tried and true" phrases that you can use when you’re feeling stretched.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Two Titans of Silicon Valley, one prize, dominance in the world of artificial intelligence. |
| 0:07.0 | Supremacy is the real story behind the struggle to own our digital future and potentially the very nature of human experience. |
| 0:16.0 | Supremacy by Parmy Olson, described as a riveting tale by the new scientist, winner of the Financial |
| 0:22.6 | Times Business Book of the Year, and now the Waterstone's nonfiction book of the month. |
| 0:27.5 | Listen to the audiobook of Supremacy Now. |
| 0:30.6 | I want to recommend a podcast called Think Fast, Talk Smart to help you become a more effective communicator. |
| 0:39.0 | Every Tuesday, host and Stanford lecturer Matt Abrams sits down with experts to discuss how to hone and develop |
| 0:44.7 | your communication skills. Whether you want to make small talk that leaves a big impression, |
| 0:49.9 | nail your big presentation at work, or perfect your wedding toast, this show will offer you |
| 0:55.1 | science-based strategies so you can communicate with confidence and clarity. Listen every Tuesday |
| 1:00.7 | wherever you get your podcasts and find additional content to level up your communication at |
| 1:05.7 | faster smarter.io. I'm the kind of person who always wants to be in multiple places at the same time. |
| 1:17.2 | Between teaching, conducting my own research, consulting, and giving talks to companies, and at |
| 1:23.3 | conferences across the globe, I have that kind of calendar that would give most people a panic attack. |
| 1:30.2 | I've been doing this and studying stress long enough to know that this jam-packed schedule |
| 1:35.0 | is a recipe for burnout. I love keeping busy, but I hate feeling like I'm being overly |
| 1:42.0 | ambitious because that can come at the expense of my well-being. |
| 1:46.3 | But what if it doesn't have to be this way? |
| 1:51.4 | I'm Madupa Akinola. This is Ted Business, a podcast from Ted. |
| 1:56.8 | Our speaker today is Tarveen Forrester. She oversees workplace culture at Kickstarter, and she's here to tell us about sustainable ambition. |
| 2:07.3 | The secret she says, boundaries. |
| 2:10.0 | Then after the talk, I'll give an example of how I establish boundaries in my own life. |
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