How to Balance Work and Play in Design, Strategy, and Life | Timm Bloem
How can work and play coexist, and perhaps even be integrated? Timm Bloem offers passionate wisdom about finding balance in work and play, speaking from experience in brand strategy, marketing, sports, music, architecture, and more.
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Timm Bloem is Principal at TB, a Creative Strategy Studio. Based in Michigan.
Timm on social media:
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Books mentioned in this episode:
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
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MM: You're pretty passionate about sports in general and I know you're big University of Michigan football fan. It's part of your upbringing. How does being a fan of a team play into your sense of identity?
TB: Honestly, that was a pretty big deconstruct that I've had in my life. Grew up, and I'll kind of call out my dad on this, my mom said early in the in the marriage, you know, Michigan would lose... I grew up kind of with the Fab Five and and what-not… Michigan football's always been big. And you know, my mom would say that my dad would lose like a week at times, based on how frustrated he was. So my brother Paul was one of the first people to kind of do this disconnect a little bit from and say, “Listen, I don't want to lose my life from cheering for this.” I took it one step further and just kind of looked at it and was like, “These are basically high school kids. I have no control over this situation." I love to cheer for it. My baby book is more Michigan than probably me at some points. So there is an identity there, and you go through different seasons of it as well. They switch over to Adidas and I'm not an Adidas guy, and then all a sudden they're back at Nike. So how much weight can you actually put in it? So I actually used it as a pretty big… kind of an annoying answer to it, but I really have done work to control my heart rate and control my obsession with it with an understanding, again I have no control and I want to enjoy this. I don't want to lose even the night or the day after. And listen you lose to Ohio, that can be quite the challenge. But beyond that, yeah it's it's a great water cooler topic, get together with friends and family, which becomes increasingly harder. Cool to stick with something for now four decades worth of time. But ultimately, going back to the play element of it, it needs to stay fun. In an area, like I said, you can't control.
MM: For a long time I never really understood how people could feel so emotionally invested in a in a team. And then I've just recently been joining the English Premier League bandwagon and it has clicked for me in a way where I'm like, “Oh, this is what it's like to get to feel so emotionally connected.” But it results in that that opportunity for social connection.
TB: Absolutely. And extends far beyond sports as well, right? You have different people and I could look at an Ohio fan and I can judge them and that takes all the mystery out of them as a human. And you look at different, am I a Democrat, am I a Republican, not to go full politics there but it does help with that. Because all university is is this conglomerate of different people and different types of races in life. And you know, you can make sports dramatic but it really does kind of layer that into the experience of, it's not just me and my immediate family or friends that I chose. You get a larger group of people and I just really enjoy it, for all of those reasons. And just being competitive as hell. It's just fun to wake up in something low-risk-level and compete.
MM: I love it. It seems like you bring the same level of excellence that you have in your professional life into your hobbies and your play. You're taking them, you know, to the max, in the best way. How about the other way around… are there times where you are bringing something from your personal life, or the way that you play or relax or engage others in relationships that you have, how often are you bringing that into your professional life into your client projects, your relationships?
TB: I think… you know, going through some seasons of life that are maybe a little bit tougher at times… you can just become… you can lose your curiosity quite quickly. So they always say with depression, one of the telltale signs of it either coming on or leaving is when you either gain or lose your curiosity. So I think again as you get older and have more responsibilities, the time that you have to kind of put yourself into those spots, and play becomes increasingly challenging. And work can become mundane. Play can be mundane at certain times. So what I try and do is, you know, on the hobby side, find things I'm curious about that doesn't take the same brain power, the same wavelengths that I'm operating every day. A lot of that time means getting away from the computer. Getting away from digital. Going into that side of it. But I think just that element of curiosity… when been in the agency space for a long time, you have this experience as well. Like we'd always have that line, I think we said a million times, like you're in downtown Chicago, there's probably a hundred other people trying to do the exact same thing as you. So you think you're kind of isolated in that, but there's always different ripples that you can do to either separate yourself or to serve a client better. And so again it can be challenging to take that one step further. Like play can become really challenging for me because, you know, my path to being a creative was not going to school and going to art school or something like that. So a lot of my passions exist in play that I would want to extend. So there needs to be kind of that buffer both ways, If play ends up looking exactly like work, or work has a lot of the elements that I would have done previously, you really do have to try and strike that balance and figure it out. Otherwise it truly does feel like you're just living this loop all at a different time.
MM: Wow, what a fascinating kind of metric… to have curiosity be something that you can see wax and wane as mental health and emotional health is there. And how that goes hand-in-hand with, you know, excellence in work or imperfection and experimentation. That's a really fascinating thing.
TB: You've heard me say this many different times, like outsider eyes are the most powerful eyes. That came from a mentor of ours and David Gardner as well, and I will always say, “I don't have an original thought in my body.” My play tends to involve physical activity because a lot of the work doesn't involve that. So swimming, running, those different pieces. How do you carry that over? I just think it's remarkable... what the name of the book that I reference quite a bit… you have the “art of war,” but the War of Art. I recommend it to anyone. Has a little bit of a faith lens to it, but anybody can read it. In that regard, and something I really took from that is the brain's remarkable ability to be… you shut your laptop and you go for a swim, your brain's going to keep noodling at that problem the entire time. So it really benefits you. So many people take pride in, “I work 23 hours in a row and I did all different stuff.” The reality is, your brain, you need to at certain points shut the work you're doing. But there's a massive benefit to that. You go out into your play, into your life… your brain's going to keep humming on that and it can come back in. You get fresh on both sides of it. So it's not just, “hey, you need balance because it's a thing you should do.” Your work benefits from it when you when you step outside of it. I think play does the same thing. You appreciate it. The blood's flowing. Things are moving. Maybe you pick up that idea if you can bring that back in, and vice-versa, it's really powerful. I often took a lot of pride in being the guy that would be there when they turn the lights off. And I don't take pride in that anymore. I think there's something wrong with that. And you see that in the top CEOs as well. You're like, “I'm home at 5:00 to be with my kids.” That's not just a cop-out, that's because they're able to continue thinking about that and they get better and they know they'll be fresher. So again, I love the context of the podcast because, like many things, I don't think they're mutually exclusive.
MM: Seeing the pattern of how an idea or, you know, a creative challenge, can kind of weave in and out of our minds, and then we have distractions here and there… I think that actually plays well with what you said earlier. We are all compilations of other people's ideas and influences. And it is fun to see how an idea that we can be working on, we can feel stuck, or at least I can feel stuck, and then there will be someone else's idea or influence that will come at the right time and that and that will speak to that, It's like, “Oh, that was the missing piece.” Now I can take that idea but it's not, it's still their idea, because I'm applying their idea into my challenge and then still making that my own, and my own solution.
TB: Absolutely. Well it goes to, I mean, nothing's new under the sun. I said it already, I don't have an original thought in my in my bones. And when you remove that pressure of being the guy that's going to have the original quote and whatever stuff, it does open that up quite a bit. Absolutely.
MM: Throughout your career you've worked with a bunch of heavy-hitter clients, from Nike to Walmart, many in between. Each one with different needs, personalities, brand components. How do you approach working with a client, someone new or someone you worked with before, and bringing out what's unique to them?
TB: I'm going to steal a line from a former roommate of mine, post-college. For whatever reason he uttered the phrase, “Ultimately it's not about me.” And that stuck with me for a very long time. You've existed in the brand world, you know personas. You know those different pieces. But really, you got to get outside of yourself, to some degree, when it comes to that work. On some of the larger clients, I'd say Nike was one of the first household names I worked with, also happened to be one that I was obsessed with… if I had the swoosh when I was playing back in my AU days it was like, I'm with everybody, I can do this. I really feel like having great expectations or a respect for a brand, at times, can be challenging. You look at them and you go, “Well I got to do exactly what you want or what I think you want.” But then you lose that creativity. So looping back around to that, “Ultimately, it's not about me.” You're trying to get in the shoes of the person that you're selling to, which again is a goofy place to exist in because you're trying to sell them, maybe a shoe, but you also are trying to give them an experience that's going to be meaningful to them. So I just always try to use the data to support, to remove my element of that, or my preferences, but then taking it and extending it a little bit further. And just really trying to design an experience that is going to going to hook into them, that they're going to enjoy. So many times in the experiential world there's really cool things, but you kind of look behind the curtain and it's a kind of poor experience. I've become very obsessed with the consumer journey and just thinking about how someone's going to move from point to point to point. And the cool thing is you can take that from experiential, which is a physical place and activation mode, and bring that into a logo. Bring it into brand work. Bring it into digital. You're just thinking about, “What is the most seamless path that you can have somebody move from one point to another, and be motivated to do so?” Try and time an experience or time some sort of marketing to an intersection where somebody can, where they're most receptive to the product. When they're going to enjoy it. When they're going to have the capacity not only think on it, but extend that word. So I think again with those big clients you’ve got to remember that they're not that different than Michigan football. It's a collection of people. Some of them happy, some of them frustrated, but they've got business goals. And if you start with that goal and work back, but you keep the consumer in mind, that's where I think the joy is. And that's where you end up finding that place where, a lot of times if you're in the a business, you enjoy even if it isn't your niche. You're going to find elements that are going to reflect your personality a little bit in it, or is going to be, you know, surprise and delight for yourself.
MM: I love that you're keeping the consumer journey in mind as well. So I imagine that helps you ensure that things are staying authentic and not bridging into the territory of ever being gimmicky, as in an attempt to try something new.
TB: Yeah, everyone has their guard up for just being marketed to. And I think the great balance is, listen, if you have a product or you have a service that can help someone, I think that's the big piece. And what I gravitate towards in brand work, tt can just be design. It can just be an experience. But if you're trying to really get in there and create some joy for someone and you're meeting a need at the same point, there's usually an intersection that is going to pay dividends to both sides. Meaning they buy the product but their life gets a little better in some way. Maybe it gives them more confidence because of something you're wearing. Maybe it's an experience that just broke them from their mundane. But that's the kind of balance that I think I try and use. When I think about what gimmicky is… too salesy. Don't really want to be a part of it. But also you got to do it. It's a necessary evil to some regard. Just trying to find that in-between land.
MM: So in the in-between land, and you talked about joy, you talked about fun and connection. Has play ever been a part of the projects you've done, whether in the external output, or in the internal processes?
TB: I think it absolutely has. I've gone pretty deep down the well of experiential there, but that's a great corner of it. As I get older, I've turned 41 this year, you get to the point that you do realize that this brain that you've had since you were 15… I remember looking in the mirror and being like, “What's 40 going to look like?” And I stare in that same mirror and I go, “You were having these same thoughts.” This is the same consciousness that you had since you were 10 years old. So the element of play, what they often say like when you're a kid, you just you're coloring outside the lines. You're doing all this different stuff and if you can restore a piece of that in you. I think it benefits you on all those different levels. So you might be climbing a corporate ladder, you might have bills to pay, you might have those different corners of responsibilities. But if you lose the play, if you lose the curiosity into it, you're really doing yourself and those that you serve a disservice. I just think play is the first that can go at times. But I would encourage anybody that is in that spot… It's not work AND play, it's just life. So finding that structure for you, whether it's a type of job where you sit at a desk and that allows you to focus, or it's one that's a little bit more external and incorporates it into it. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to others to find something that, at the risk of sounding corny, evokes joy in you. Because once again, everyone's going to benefit from that, top-down.
MM: I love that. That the the joy is almost a currency, it’s something that we can be quite short on.
TB: Well said.
MM: Thank you. In a context where there's very serious business goals, and we all want to do good work, and we want to do excellence… play and light-heartedness can sometimes be pushed to the side. So I really appreciate the way that you are talking about that, in a very cohesive way. That this is something that is just organic. We bring our whole selves into our work.
TB: I'm not perfect at it to to be very clear. That balance has always been a challenge. I referenced it earlier, if you pack too much into the workplace that you would have done elsewhere, it can be challenging. But that definitely is the, you know, the window treatment I'm looking at every morning, to just try and say, “Okay, don't lose that piece of it.” You'll be better for it. And I I think your clients are served better when you bring that whole self into your work.
MM: So speaking of the way of you present yourself, I really appreciate your Instagram presence, because it's this wonderful blend, and I see this in your portfolio of your work as well. You have this amazing blend of demonstrating your design sensibilities but also there's an air of mystery in the way you present yourself online, if I may say. And that feels both strategic and playful. How do you want people to engage what you put out externally?
TB: That's great. Well I think myself, like many but I'll just own it myself, there was a point when it was, how many likes are you going to get and different stuff. I got Instagram a little bit later. I made a decision: This is a party of one. I love memorializing different trips or movements, or as I've said before, if you can find a little beauty in the mundane, whether it's a song, whether it's, you know I love when you post a car on the street of Chicago. Like there's a moment, you existed in it. So I'm not thinking about anybody else. The amount of shit that I'll catch at times, “Where are you? Why is this person not in it?” It happens quite a bit. Yes, I do operate from a sense of, whether it's right or wrong, people do it differently. I gain a lot of work from that, especially being a a two-man team, and in that space there is a piece of that. But I'm just usually experimenting or I'm going, “How did I experience that?” Because I want to capture that. So yeah, there tends to be mystery because I tend to be behind my camera. And it's not about me. It just isn't. I don't take it that seriously. I think a lot of times it can come off seriously, but man… I think a hidden dream, I was telling my old man this the other day. I was like, “Man, it would be so fun to score a movie. I get to the point, I don't remember the the terminology behind it, but John Mayer will always say like he hears in colors. I think that's what he says. There's a technical term to it. When I hear a song that I love, I play it a hundred times in a row, until I beat it to death, You know maybe it's a component of ADD as well. Um but when I get that, and you get to pair that against a moment that you had, mysterious or my moment, I just like to capture something that's going to be a little vault in my life. And there's something a good friend, Chuck Anderson would always say, what's the worse that’s going to happen if you're going to put it out into the world? And so I love that tension at times. It's not about me, it is for me. Well then why don't I just keep it on my camera reel? No, I want it out there, because it kind of is a releasing. It's kind of, think what you think, don't think what you think, whatever. It's going to go out there and I'm going to be done with it. I'm not going to take it down and it's going to go in the archive and at some point I'll look back and I'll go "Oh, that was great." Or "That was shit." But beyond that, it's a good tension for pride. It's a good tension for just capturing moments and and moving on.
MM: It's fun that what may seem serious to someone who doesn't have the full context, for you is a free-flowing kind of, you know, light-hearted thing. And fun that it can be both depending on who's looking at it, who you have memories associated with. Each image that you put out into the world and other people don't, but it may still evoke something for them.
TB: Exactly.
MM: Have you read or listened to Rick Rubin's book?
TB: I have not read the book which is just… I should actually get removed from this podcast completely or or lose my card! But I'm obsessed with Rick Rubin. I love, more than anything about Rick Rubin, is that almost everyone when they hire him, they don't know what the hell he does. But he just brings magic to it. And when you talk to Rick, he's like, “It's just about being your authentic self and finding what you love.” Don't do it for someone else. That's probably where you're leading. You look down the the archives of what he's been a part of. You go from Beastie Boys, you go to Johnny Cash, you go all over the board. And the reality is, it doesn't follow a single mold. It doesn't look like, you know Jack Antonoff, where you're like, “Oh, there's that bass beat, there's that whatever.” He has that ability to just really pull the best out of people. And I think that's why it's sustained, is because you just really get a sense of, this is what this human or this band was trying to communicate in this moment with their art. And we're going to remove all the noise and pressures they might have got from the label and stuff. So you just nailed it. Yeah, just call me Rick Rubin from now. You know that would be probably the biggest compliment. Plus, please give me a bungalow in Malibu and allow the best people to come in and be inspired by it! Rough job.
MM: It's pretty inspiring for sure. And if you have a chance to listen to the audio book in particular, he reads it himself, and it's fantastic. I read it through twice last year. So many good nuggets on creativity and authenticity. There's many things you've said that have made me think of it, but he has this part in there where he's talking about how a guitar solo that might have a ton of technical virtuosity (however you pronounce that word) might be technically impressive, but it might not strike the same emotional heartstrings that a simple very simple chord progression might, because of the emotion brought into it. The authenticity that you can sense or not sense in it. That pure, technical precision alone, and this could be extended into many design things, pure technical precision and and output does not always hit in the same way that something much simpler, but more authentic and more emotional.
TB: Yes, you nailed it. And it's kind of a cycle around to a previous question you have, is I think in design, which I had become obsessed with for a long time, and I'm not as technical. I wouldn't even call myself a designer. I'm a person that designs. But the art of perfection you're always aiming for. If you're, again I'll just beat a dead horse here, but if you're working on Nike, the expectation and their expectation is it's perfect, based on the brief. And what you're trying to deliver, most times, creating a structure, whether it's brand, and I call them like the stakes or you think of a trampoline and amount of springs you're going to need in order to jump. Some brands have about three strings and you can bounce away. Some about 45 of them and that's what you need in order to get the messaging right in different pieces. But what you find, no matter what the amount of springs (I prefer less springs in it to kind of corral it), the mistakes, the natural, is what make it the best. So going back to Rubin, they might have a perfect curated piece and it was supposed to be done with this level of whatever, but it's the outtake that makes it. And that's pretty consistent in a lot of the work that you'll hear from his bands, where they scream at the end, or Billie Eilish uses a street sign and pulls it in from being Australia. Like that stuff, I think that humans… listen, we're not AI. We're not robots. You you can pull in what's real. And when you aren't perfect you become more relatable. So I think there's a balance there. Strive for the perfection but be really open because the gold is, a lot of times, in those little mistakes, the little curve balls, or the detours.
MM. That’s amazing. Are there any forms of play, creativity, or connection that you're not currently engaging, or maybe never have but that interest you, that you're curious about, or maybe you say “Someday I'll eventually get to that.”?
TB: Yeah. You know my brother Paul, we're very very different…
MM: I love Paul by the way.
TB: Paul is tremendous. But being about five years older, into sports, he's a computer engineer. He has taken up hobbies that do such a great job of balancing the digital in his life. You know, in Covid it was sourdough bread. He wasn't alone in that but my goodness was he good at it. And it bared fruit. The next thing he got into was woodworking. You know, bought all the different pieces. And if you want somebody to just go from zero to 100 he's going to have all the equipment. And so I got to partner with him a little bit on that. Now we're talking a little bit about 3D printers and stuff. But I have a deep envy for that, because there's a curiosity there. It taps into the engineering side of it but I would like to get more tactical. I've just realized more and more and more, I've just become aware of dopamine and just different balances within myself. And digital is a problem to me. You know, I wore glasses on the drive down here because my eyes were just bleeding from the time spent from the computer in the last couple days. And for me it needs to be, I'm going back over and over, you can tell it's a trend, but a balance between the two. So for me it's working with my hands and finding ways that connect those pieces and curiosity, while still becoming tactile. Stepping into the grass, using your hands, getting out there. Those are the pieces that I think in my life I have not mastered yet. I I spent far too much time. and and you know as well as anybody, it's not a statement on you, like dopamine can disappear and it can go as fast as anything if you're scrolling around your phone and it's been trained, to tap into it and it's it's the easy… it's the sugar you can take after a long day. You get on it but I just think there's so much in this world, that if you become too digital or you become too tied into that, you're just going to miss a lot. So that that's my piece. Not enough physical and wanting to pour into that because again, I think there's benefits to all those different pieces. I gravitate towards those things that are not just full isolation. They might be isolating but you can bring somebody into it, either through hospitality or through engagement and whatnot.
MM: I love that and I do have ADHD so I resonate with the dopamine piece very much. But yeah, there's something about doing something with your hands that you simply can't recreate in a digital world. And increasingly with AI you can make amazing things. My hope is actually that, ironically, you know, certain aspects with AI will become increasingly commoditized and it's just like, “Oh, you want a beautiful image generated? I can do that for you in seconds.” And so there's certain parts of work where that's going to be tougher to bring authenticity. But I actually hope that in a way, the more digital our lives get, that it inversely makes the physical, tangible things you can touch with your hands that much more valuable, because you cannot recreate the experience of what it is to feel the wood in the woodworking. To garden and feel the moisture of the soil on your fingers. Whatever it is, you cannot recreate those things digitally. And so as much as people are scared about where AI is going or anything like that, it's like, you know, this is actually going to make the real world even better for you… if you pay attention.
TB: Absolutely. In theory, the best case for me is it saves time on some of these mundane tasks, allows you to, no different than social and different pieces… they have their good and the bad but getting at our visibility into this earth, and the ability to see things and have exposure or connectivity is higher than it's ever been. That's beautiful. But there's a lot of it that is artificial, that you don't know what's behind it. And yeah, I've just been really drawn into your life being work and life being one stretch, but blending all of those and not calling one bad and one good. But in my life, the index needs to be more towards the connection, and needs to be more towards, you know, the environment. The notion that you can go outside and stand in your your yard and there's going to be an energy that you couldn't get if you had your shoes on sitting on a hardwood floor. That's powerful and I don't think I've gone far enough in that. But you still have responsibilities in front of those screens and so you got to find it.
MM: Love that. Alright so considering everything we've covered… in the Timm Bloem dictionary, how do you define play for you?
TB: I love this question, I love this podcast. Just going to say it now, what a gift to spend time with you and catch up. Feels like a lot of our conversations anyways (I'm buying some time here). To me it's a return to either a a more childlike version of yourself, or it's finding balance between the priorities and what truly brings you joy. Hopefully there's a coming-together point of that. But I think play is in service to work, work is in service to play. One of those gets too out of whack, you're going to have an issue. So my definition of that is just you need both. Your goal in life or my goal in life is to have a good balance between the two of them. But for me if you lose play, if you lose that element of your life, everything is going to suffer. We were created to delight in this world, to go out, to be an explorer, to see. And I think that play is the most critical ingredient to being able to have the most enjoyment in this world. But not just personal enjoyment. To be able to be connected with everything else that is going on. Whether your work is digital and you're tied to that desk, play then becomes the flip side of that, that is going to give you life and give you balance. But play needs to be a part of every single piece of it. So in my mind, it’s that it's not work and play. It's just life. Play can't, or maybe shouldn't, for me be designed as that. It just needs to be fluid. And if you can find that and they use different parts of your brain, you're going to better. Everyone around you. And I think, just to sum up, design or the creative space in general, it's such a great opportunity to bring excitement and joy and connectivity to people. I just don't think it's being done right. There's task and there pieces of it. So I I think play is inherently baked into my world, but also can get lost quite quickly.
MM: Love it. Last question. A client or a friend, or you know, many of your clients become friends because of the way you engage them, comes to you and says, “Man, my balance is leaning too far on the work side. I need some play in my life. I've got a free weekend. What do you think I should do?” What would you recommend, one thing that they should try this weekend, so that they can go and incorporate some play into their life?
TB: Well I'll do what my current passion is. I'm obsessed with Frank Lloyd Wright. I've been more involved in real estate in the last couple years, and so my little thing is, get in the car. Locate, they've got great maps all over the country. You can go to Michigan, Chicago, different places. Pick them, drive on out there, go to just a a greasy spoon restaurant, maybe trespass, maybe walk around the place. But for me, seeing design, and seeing something that's preserved, and seeing how people have lived in it, and seeing how Frank Lloyd Wright incorporated the different environments around it. I just think it's kind of a cheat code for me. And I think it could be for other people, if you appreciate that, or find your lane for that. But get out, go on a road trip. Doesn't have to be a plane, doesn't have to be whatever, but just get out there. Experience surroundings. Experience an environment that has a history to it. Because you find in life, you know, the world can revolve around you. You can make it feel that way and your problems are big and this… and when you take a snapshot out and realize you're just floating on this rock, and you're one and you know your light is going to be extinguished at some point… just the notion of firing up the car, without immense amount of purpose, and going out and exploring an area. I think you come back and at least for me everything else kind of gains a little bit of perspective. But if you find beauty out there, any semblance of beauty, whatever form of beauty, whether it's the architecture or the landscape, you come back refreshed in some regard, and the rest of life has a little bit more color, a little bit more perspective to it. So yeah, hop in your car, go on a little road trip.
MM: I love that. That's so fun. And I have not done enough of visiting the Frank Lloyd Wright sites, for how many of them are in the Chicago area. I think I've been to two and I probably need to change that. So that's a fantastic suggestion! Timm, thank you so much for chatting with me. This has been so fun. Every time I chat with you it feels like this, where I just walk away being very grateful for you.
TB: Pleasure’s mine, man.
