Dian Rosanti: The Art of Being Fully Present for Our Loved Ones
“People are really important to me.”
The sentence above was the statement which I remembered the most from our Senior Vice President of Product Management, Dian Rosanti, who was joining GO-JEK in January 2018. For less than 30 minutes, she told me about her life journey as being a product manager and as being a woman herself.
As I listened to her stories, I couldn’t help but notice that she gave me the warm feeling in which I couldn’t describe; maybe, it was because of some parts in her stories which I didn’t expect. Dian stayed and worked with some startup companies in Silicon Valley for 7 years; she even has worked in Flipboard and Change.org for a few years.
So, what made her decide to go back to Indonesia and pursue her career at GO-JEK instead of staying in Silicon Valley? One of the most important reasons is to be closer to her family in Jakarta.
For Dian, her family is her number one priority and she will try her best to be well-performed in her career as well as maintaining her relationship with her loved ones. Despite her love for her job as a Product Manager, she realized that there is no such thing as a work-life balance and it’s more of a work-life integration.
Dian believes that it is almost impossible to divide an exact 50:50 proportion for both in our work lives and social lives; people tend to invest their time in one of their life’s aspects. A work-life balance will create an implicit competition between our work and personal lives, meanwhile, the work-life integration is making the most out of those two aspects by combining it all together. For example, Dian and her husband decided to celebrate their wedding anniversary in Bangalore as it was in the same time that Dian had a business trip to Bangalore.
For Dian, if we truly want to invest ourselves in something, then be present in it at all costs,
“I learned this the hard way when I was bringing my work home because I thought that would allow me to spend more time with my partner. But even though I was physically at home, I was usually glued to my laptop, so my time was never spent deeply connecting with him; we didn’t even argue, we just felt distant and for some time it didn’t feel like we were even friends anymore. It would have been better to stay at work later, but be fully present when I got home.” Dian believes that being present is the key to maintaining any kind of relationship with other people.
When we’re (too) in love with our job, we tend to forget the importance of nourishing the affection for those people that we love the most. For Dian and some of us, maintaining a relationship while being busy with our career could be challenging, but it’s not impossible to do it. So, what should we do?
According to Dian, prioritizing our time is the answer. Prioritizing times mean that we know exactly the times when we need to be mindfully present for one thing or another. Some days, she has to choose to spend more time on work over family, but she is OK with that as long as the time with family is high-quality.
At the end of the day, it all comes back to our loved ones as they are the people who will always make us feel at home. The story of our SVP of Product Manager always reminds me of the thing which matters the most in our life; our loved ones. Thank you, Ms. Dian Rosanti, for sharing your beautiful thoughts with us!
As the closing, let me quote her graceful message for all of us, especially for all the women in the world;
“Never be afraid of asking for what you want, because if you never ask, people won’t know what you need. We tend to hold back our voices because most of the time, we are afraid of being judged, or of rejection. Well, when we’re being judged, what is the worst thing that could happen? I believe in asking for what you need and what you think you deserve, as long as it is with good intentions. ”
Originally published at GO-JEK Careers Blog (March 14, 2018)
