This year feels like an especially major milestone, for a few reasons.
First, because it officially marks 10 years that Forte Labs has been in business. In June 2013, I left my consulting job with plans to work on independent projects for a couple months before seeking my next one. Little did I know those months would stretch out for a decade.
Second, this year marks the statistical halfway point of my life. According to the U.S. Social Security Administration, as a male born in 1985, I’m projected to live another 38 years (based on the most recent 2020 mortality data) to the age of 76, in 2061 (though that estimate will be pushed forward as I age).
I don’t know why I’m so morbidly fascinated by things like this. I don’t have a particularly strong fear of death, but I do find these kinds of estimates helpful to give me a sense of perspective and ask myself questions like:
- What would I do differently if I knew my life was halfway over?
- What would I change if I knew my life was 10 years shorter than that estimate? What about 20 years?
- What would I do differently if it was 10 or 20 years longer?
Third, now that we have two kids, I suddenly have a timeline for the next couple decades. They are 1 and 3 years old, so I know that they will be kids from now until about 2035, or 11 more years. And assuming they leave home at 18, they’ll live with us until 2040, or another 16 years. Those spans of time feel so short, it makes me think more purposefully about how I want to spend them.
I know it’s weird to think about childhood so mathematically, but again I find it helpful to ask these kinds of questions:
- What kinds of experiences do I want to have with my kids while they’re young?
- Where do I want to travel and live with them while they’re impressionable?
- What are the important life events I want to be part of?
- What experiences and activities do I want to have after they leave home?
Considering this biggest of pictures, this is the first time I’m doing a year-end review with the past and future decades in mind. How do I want to live my life in 2024 to lay the groundwork for that future?
Let’s start by recapping what happened in 2023.
2023 – A Year of Reinvention
In August, I published an in-depth article about how we planned to recover from an 87% drop in profit from 2021 to 2022, which functioned as something of a “mid-year” review. Now that those plans have come to fruition, I’m very happy to share…it worked!
We finished the year with about $2 million in revenue, and a decent 20% profit margin as a company. In other words, revenue was flat from the year before, but we managed to return to profitability after just about breaking even in 2022.
My theme for 2023 was “reinvention,” and it indeed took an almost complete overhaul of the business to turn the corner. Here were the 3 most important efforts we undertook to make it happen:
- Cost-cutting multiple five-figures worth of recurring expenses (which you can read about in full here)
- Letting go of six full-time staff over the course of the year and relying more on contractors instead
- Creating multiple new revenue streams by leveraging our existing content and audience
Let me say more about each of these.
#1 – Cost-cutting multiple five-figures worth of recurring expenses
This year I had to really reexamine my attitude towards spending, and money in general.
I’ve always been a free spender when it comes to books, courses, coaching, software, and other investments in the business. I don’t buy luxury clothes, cars, or furniture, but anything that has a potential return on investment I’m usually game for.
That attitude has created a lot of upside for me over the years, allowing me to learn new skills and take advantage of many opportunities. But 2021 to 2022 was the first time we didn’t grow as a company, which forced me to reconsider my attitude.
As long as a company is growing, almost any investment seems worthwhile. It only makes sense to take the profits being generated and funnel them back into more growth. But the minute a company is no longer profitable, then no investment makes sense. You suddenly can’t afford to invest in anything, because every dollar of additional spending just sends you deeper into the hole of unprofitability.
It is this about-face shift – from investing in many things to investing in nothing – that was so hard for me to make. I had to really rethink fundamental assumptions I held, for example:
- Always prioritizing the long term instead of the short term (there is no long term if you don’t make it through the short term)
- A willingness to take financial risks for potentially large rewards (though the calculus changes a lot when you have kids and payroll to make and can’t sleep at night)
- Believing that “money isn’t important” (it suddenly becomes important when you don’t have enough of it)
I was able to trace back my free-spending attitudes to my childhood. Growing up with a very frugal father, I interpreted that frugality as stinginess and a lack of generosity. So I subconsciously reacted against that in adulthood by deciding I would be the exact opposite. In my mind, I was being generous, saying yes to everything from expensive SaaS subscriptions to high-end MacBook Pros to new full-time hires and more.
You can probably see where this is going. This level of spending is fine as long as the money is rolling in, as it did during the boom times in the online course industry during the pandemic. If that had continued for years, I would probably have dug us into an even deeper hole. Luckily, the slump in course sales at the end of the pandemic forced a reckoning.
I’ve learned that money buys peace of mind, which is priceless. So you can think of each dollar saved as a dollar invested in calm days and nights of deep sleep. I learned that most expenses are so easy to start, but often quite difficult to stop (made more difficult on purpose by many companies), so you have to take this into account and spend less than you theoretically could. I learned about the importance of a thick, healthy margin, which is what allows a company to experiment, invest in the future, and spend the time and effort needed to develop new products that won’t bring in revenue for some time.
Most of all, I learned that gratitude is a privilege, and something that has to be earned. Only profitable, growing companies can afford to be generous – with their employees, their contractors, their collaborators, and ultimately their customers. This lesson came to a head most clearly and painfully when we reached a breaking point and I had no choice but to let go of full-time staff.
#2 – Letting go of six full-time staff over the course of the year and relying more on contractors instead
These were some of the hardest moments of 2023 for me. Deactivating a SaaS subscription or winding down a contractor gig is one thing, but terminating the full-time employment of someone who relies completely on that income? Whose family depends on their health insurance? That’s altogether different.
It was difficult for me not to see each of the staff I had to let go this year as a personal failure of mine. They trusted me with their time and attention and a good chunk of their careers, and I failed to put their contributions to productive, profitable use. I know these were business agreements that either side could terminate “at will,” but nevertheless, I find it really hard to see it that way.
I learned an important lesson about the difference between full-time W-2 employees and contractors. It’s not a small one. For the first couple years I started building the team, I had preferred hiring W-2 employees over contractors, because I assumed that I would get an extra “bump” in productivity and value added due to them being able to dedicate 100% of their time and attention to the business.
In retrospect, that preference is mine, and I assumed it was true for everyone else. I like being completely, 100% immersed and committed to one thing – that’s why I’m an entrepreneur! But for a small, Internet-based business like ours, most of the “jobs-to-be-done” aren’t actually full-time jobs. We often only need someone part-time, or seasonally, or for certain specialized tasks that can be done on a project basis, and often using reusable templates, automated systems, or their own specialized contractors to get it done fast.
Essentially, I had to personally discover why so much of the economy is moving to independent contractors these days: not only because they are less expensive and can be dialed up or down as the business fluctuates, but because buying more of someone’s time doesn’t always lead to a proportional increase in value added. In many cases, each additional hour purchased yields diminishing returns.
The new rules I’ve come up with for when to hire (especially full-time) are as follows:
- DO NOT hire just to solve a problem (there are endless problems in a business, which would then necessitate endless hires)
- DO NOT hire just because an existing employee is overwhelmed or overloaded (which often obscures the root issue and dumps the worst of their workload onto the new person, which is demoralizing)
- DO NOT hire just to make my life easier (because that additional payroll will be a constant stressor, making my life harder instead)
- DO NOT hire if the issue can be addressed by eliminating it altogether, delegating it, outsourcing it, or automating it using software or systems
- ONLY HIRE if there will be a direct, measurable growth in profit (not just revenue) attributable to the hire, with a clear scope and metrics of success defined from the start
In other words, it is only the highest performers, in the most critical roles, with a direct lever to increase the profitability of the business, who can justifiably be hired full time.
We spent most of the year transitioning almost completely away from W-2 employees as a result, while also reducing our total headcount 26% from 19 to 14. The team we have now is not only more appropriate for our size, but is tighter-knit and more flexible since there are now fewer people to coordinate on any decision.
#3 – Creating multiple new revenue streams by leveraging our existing content and audience
For the first 9 years of the business, over 90% of our revenue came from a single source: our live, cohort-based course Building a Second Brain (BASB).
Looking back, putting all our eggs in this one basket was a smart move and an incredible blessing. Because we were able to focus most of our efforts on this one product, we were perfectly poised to take advantage of the explosion in online education once the pandemic hit. In March of 2020, no one had a better live course with a better track record than us, and the format of live cohorts delivered via Zoom (which everyone now knew how to use) meant we could capture so much of that demand with a tiny team.
I knew that online course sales couldn’t continue at that level forever, but the speed and severity of the drop-off hit me by surprise. At the start of 2023, the numbers couldn’t lie: we needed to diversify and find new ways of making money. We began that effort in earnest in Q1, identifying 6 new revenue streams we could spin up using existing assets and sell to our quickly growing audience (fueled by YouTube and book sales).
I can now report back on how each of those efforts played out:
Upgraded our affiliate program: We created a new Recommended Tools page listing all our favorite SaaS tools, and began recommending our favorite online courses by other creators, generating a few thousand dollars so far.
Produced 5 sponsored YouTube videos and a dozen newsletter placements: We began partnering with other companies on sponsored videos for our YouTube channel and placements in our weekly newsletter, generating six figures in revenue for the year.
Hosted the third annual Second Brain Virtual Summit: We made this a paid event for the first time, and it made four figures in revenue.
Offered a new standalone virtual workshop on How to Use AI for Your Second Brain: I summarized everything I learned over several months of immersion in the generative AI world, which made five figures in revenue, plus ongoing sales of the recording.
Created an all-new BASB Foundation 2.0 course: This was the first time we applied everything we’ve learned about creating high-quality educational YouTube videos to courses, and the relaunch generated a few hundred thousand in revenue, plus it can now be purchased year-round.
Published The PARA Method book: We put this book together in about 5 months from start to finish, using mostly existing content from the blog, generating over $100,000 USD in book advances and 25,000 copies sold so far.
Launched the Pillars of Productivity course: For the last few months of the year, our focus was on creating a whole new course from scratch, for the first time in years. The launch went spectacularly well, generating over $400,000 in revenue from more than 2,000 students.
From one year ago to today, we’ve expanded from 1 to 5 major sources of revenue, while also making our sales asynchronous again so we have the bandwidth to create even more new things in 2024 (the yellow slice refers to “Second Brain Memberships”):
It took more work than I expected, as is usually the case, but we’re now on the firmest financial footing we’ve ever been on since we don’t have to rely on a single product anymore.
Lessons learned on YouTube: It’s all about quality, not consistency
Over the last couple of years, I’ve invested a tremendous amount of time, money, and attention into growing our YouTube channel. In August 2022, I published a blog post declaring that I was going all-in on YouTube, and I remain convinced today that it’s the single most promising educational platform in the world.
As of August 2023, 12 months after that declaration and 18 months into taking the platform seriously, here are our results:
- We released 30 videos, gained 160,000 subscribers, and received 5.5M views in that time
- We spent $346,000, including:
- $209,000 for an Executive Producer
- $41,400 on video editors
- $24,586 on buying and renting gear
- $24,500 for an assistant producer
- $17,500 on travel expenses for off-site shoots
- $10,000 for a studio design consultant
- $9,600 for an on-site producer for shoots
- $5,565 on software and services
- $2,000 for an on-site production assistant
- $1,500 on animations
- We made $445,000, including:
- $353,965 from attributed course sales
- $60,000 from sponsors
- $30,878 from Google AdSense
- We profited $99,000, for a 22% gross margin
- On average, we spent $11,524 and gained 5,356 new subscribers per video, which means for each subscriber we spent $2 and made $3
- It took us 22 days on average to produce each video
These numbers are strong, but still rely heavily on course sales to justify; without those, it would be a deeply money-losing endeavor.
In summer 2023, we had to reduce the team dedicated to YouTube, and streamline our production process to make it cheaper and faster. Over the last 4 months, we’ve succeeded in sticking to a 2-week publishing schedule, but at the cost of considerably lower views and engagement in general. Subscriber growth held steady and even accelerated a bit, but I think that was most likely due to the accumulated strength of our existing videos.
My conclusion is that it is really hard to consistently make exceptional quality YouTube videos, and it’s especially hard to do it on a budget and without multiple dedicated specialists. We’ve had to dial back our investment in video production, but we’re clearly seeing the impact of lower-performing videos that are causing our growth to stall.
In 2024, we’ll try to course correct by finding new ways to improve our video quality and virality without breaking the bank. Now that we’ve mastered consistency, it’s time for the pendulum to swing back and for us to focus on maximizing quality once again. The power of YouTube is in its leverage – the ability to do more and more with less and less over time – and I’m looking for ways to find that leverage while keeping costs low.
The long arc of my career
Since this year marks our 10-year anniversary as a company, I decided to go back and reconstruct our financial trajectory over that period. We’ve made $8,959,404 in that time, spent $5,419,600, and profited $3,341,769. The great majority of that came in the last 3 years.
A few interesting points jumped out at me from this analysis.
First, when divided over 10 years, my income comes out to $334,177 per year on average. This is a great income, to be sure, but it isn’t that far off from what a mid-level tech manager or executive at a large company would make. I’m probably in the top 0.1% of most financially prosperous creators, yet my income is still comparable to a lot of “traditional” jobs that involve far less risk. To me, that’s a sign that we’re still in the early days of the Creator Economy.
Second, my annual income for the first four years of self-employment was $31,601, $46,947, $81,009, and $38,478, respectively. Those are not very strong numbers for the San Francisco Bay Area, where I lived during this period. Even with a lot of built-in advantages, it still took me almost half a decade to start making a wage that was sustainable for the long term. This lends support to the idea that a lot of business success is just avoiding going bankrupt.
Third, this graph clearly displays the main “eras” that have defined my career (borrowing a page from Taylor Swift):
2013 to 2015 was the Research Era. I was just trying different things (from online courses to corporate training to consulting to live workshops) to see what I wanted to focus on. I began facilitating corporate trainings, which were lucrative and responsible for the slight rise in revenue from 2014 to 2015 (which felt huge at the time). But I quickly realized that corporate training was not my true calling, and thereafter turned my attention to online courses.
2016 to 2020 was the Cohort Era. I zeroed in on digital notetaking apps and personal knowledge management as my niche, and poured all my time and energy into teaching Building a Second Brain. Delivering live cohorts was tremendously satisfying, but eventually I began to get tired of doing everything myself. I started hiring course staff to take care of the logistical details, and later, stepped away from teaching altogether.
2021 to 2022 was the Book Era. I dedicated myself to writing my first book, based on the BASB course material. My main focus was on getting that book to the finish line and releasing it as widely as possible. I found book writing tremendously enjoyable and fulfilling and plan on continuing it in the future.
2023 was clearly the start of my fourth era, but I don’t know what to call it yet. My books are still going strong, but aren’t my main priority anymore. We’re still creating courses, but no longer teaching them live. YouTube has been the biggest new area of investment recently, but is also now more or less on autopilot, and I’m not sure I’m going to massively increase my attention there.
It strikes me that I’ve tested two theories over the last few years about what would drive our growth as a business.
Initially, at the start of the pandemic, cohort-based courses were taking off so fast I thought that we should expand horizontally, becoming a kind of online productivity school for a wide range of live courses and instructors. I helped David Perell create Write of Passage, briefly had Nat Eliason’s course Effortless Output with Roam on our platform, and even talked to Ali Abdaal about hosting his Part-Time YouTuber Academy.
But as soon as we started walking down that path, it became clear it wasn’t the right one. There were so many things my team and I would have had to do to truly become a platform, from handling customer service and disputed payments to facilitating course creation and marketing. I had no desire to do those things, so we quickly dropped the idea and went back to focusing on our own programs.
My second theory was that we should instead expand vertically, translating the BASB intellectual property into many other formats and mediums (such as books, workbooks, audiobooks, TV shows, in-person events, and maybe even clothing, games, and toys). The idea was to try and make BASB into a truly recognizable and differentiated global education brand.
The two books I published were a step in that direction, but I’ve since become doubtful about this path as well. It would require us to learn completely new skills, like licensing, product design, retail distribution, paid acquisition, etc., that I don’t personally have much interest in, while simultaneously leaving behind our core market of online courses that continues to be so in demand and profitable.
So now I’m biding my time a bit to see what I feel called to. It could still involve a mix of horizontal or vertical integration, but I need to see signs that we’d be uniquely effective at something before choosing a new theory to operate on. In the meantime, we’ll continue to nurture our audience on the various platforms we’re active on, grow our existing products, and hopefully be ready for the next big opportunity when it arrives.
Resisting the urge to find the “next big thing”
I notice an internal urge to quickly decide what the “next big thing” should be so that I have a single point of focus to orient my life around. I also sense an accompanying fear: that if I don’t pick the next target, I’ll waste time and my efforts will dissipate in different directions.
I wonder if the business has transitioned into a new phase where it’s more about systematically growing multiple revenue streams in parallel, rather than “betting the company” on a single bold new direction. There’s something about that that feels calming and reassuring, but also a little sad, like my halcyon days of youth may be over and I’ve now reached “maturity” as a creator.
That said, after a rollercoaster few years, I’m definitely looking forward to a new season of business going back to “normal,” although with everything going on in the world, maybe that’s too optimistic.
In last year’s annual review, I noted that “You have to address unwanted symptoms by addressing the root cause, asking questions like: What is the source of the pattern that’s playing out across the different areas of my life? What is the bottleneck in my thinking or behavior that is leading to all the other negative side effects? What kind of life am I living that is producing these symptoms? Who am I being at my core that is manifesting these issues?”
Asking myself those questions many times over the last year, the answer couldn’t have been clearer: it was burnout, plain and simple. I’d given too much over the previous couple of years to capitalize on the pandemic boom, while simultaneously writing two books, and also having two kids. What has surprised me so much is just how long it takes to recover from that kind of long-term burnout.
It’s not just taking a vacation, or catching up on sleep, or finishing a stressful project, or even cleaning up your diet, getting more exercise, and changing your daily routines. All of that is necessary, but not sufficient.
I think what really makes recovering from burnout a lengthy process is changing who you are (or rather who you’ve been) as a result of that overextended season. I noticed that I’d made a kind of internal mental policy that “work comes first.” I would give the best of my time, energy, and attention to my work, and my family and friends got whatever was left over. Even after recognizing that attitude, it’s taken a long time to shift because it’s embedded so deeply in my thinking.
I’ve been in survival mode, one of the symptoms of which is deprioritizing or outright ignoring anything that doesn’t seem essential to getting through the next day/week/month.
That has meant ignoring house projects, and the chaos and messiness of our home is the predictable result. Now that I’m waking up to this fact, it’s almost overwhelming how much there is to do at home: possessions to declutter and get rid of, spaces to clean out and organize, appliances to fix, etc. This has created a bit of a self-reinforcing loop, as I don’t want to spend time in such a place, thereby encouraging me to run away and dedicate myself to more work instead.
It has also meant neglecting my health, which to be honest is always one of the main takeaways from every annual review. I’ve made progress in small ways, such as finding a more convenient gym and regularly fasting, but I’m still eating too much processed and sugar-laden food. This is one of the main areas I want to explore and understand and find better solutions for this year.
Goals for 2024
These may change as I consult with the team and make concrete plans in the coming weeks, but here is a (roughly chronological) initial list of goals and intentions I’d love for us to accomplish this year. If you have any mutual ones that you think we could work together on, don’t hesitate to let me know!
For the business:
#1 – Launch Crea Tu Segundo Cérebro in Spanish throughout Latin America
My book was just released in Spanish, and over the next few months, my publisher will be making a promotional push in multiple Latin American countries for it. I plan on speaking at a major conference in Puebla in March and will use the opportunity to do some promotional events in Mexico City as well.
#2 – Open the Second Brain Membership to our full audience
We’ve spent the last few months building a new subscription-based community on Circle, the Second Brain Membership, and inviting our cohort alumni to be the first to join it. Soon it will be opened to the world. My goal is to create the most vibrant, dedicated, multifaceted community of practice around Personal Knowledge Management in the world.
#3 – Launch a paid version of an AI-based clone of Tiago
We’ve been sending our followers to an AI-powered “clone” trained on over 500 pieces of my content, created by a startup. The feedback has been so surprisingly good that we’re going to launch a higher-end paid version, using the monetization tools they’ve recently released. I’d love for anyone with a “basic” question that I’ve already addressed somewhere to be able to get it answered in a convenient, conversational interface using AI.
#4 – Launch our BASB Foundation course in Portuguese, Spanish, and German
We’ve been experimenting with a service that translates videos into other languages using AI, and the results have been so good we are now using it to translate our BASB Foundation course into Portuguese, Spanish, and German. The first of these is almost ready and will be launched to that segment of our audience soon.
#5 – Launch the first cohort of a BASB certified coach/consultant program
The last few cohorts of our BASB course were taught by third-party facilitators, and the results were promising, so I want to double down on the idea. I believe that teaching, coaching, and creating content on this topic is not just immensely rewarding but also highly profitable and sustainable, and I’m very excited about the prospect of enabling coaches, consultants, and facilitators to be certified to deliver our methodology as part of their work. Stay tuned for more details!
#6 – Host the second Wholesome Mastermind retreat in Sonoma
This was one of the absolute highlights of 2023, and plans to host it again are already well underway. We’re doubling the size of the group from 11 to around 22 creators and entrepreneurs, upgrading the housing and amenities, hiring a private chef to cater the food, and this time going to Northern California wine country. I’m finding that I learn much faster and more deeply from other entrepreneurs who are going through the same challenges as I am.
#7 – Launch a PARA self-paced online course
My newest book, The PARA Method, is doing really well, with over 25,000 copies sold and multiple new languages coming soon. I’ve always been surprised by how powerful and helpful people find this incredibly simple framework, and this year I’d love to make it even easier to get started with it via a video-based course.
#8 – Host the first-ever in-person Second Brain Summit in LA
It’s been a long-time dream to host a full-scale conference on the topic of PKM and Second Brains, and I’ve just signed the paperwork with an event management company to make it happen in 2024. Modeled on the Quantified Self conferences that used to happen in the SF Bay Area and the old Evernote conferences from the early 2010s – hundreds of hardcore nerds geeking out about the latest technology, frameworks, and ideas together in one place – I have no doubt this will be an event for the history books.
#9 – Add 211,000 YouTube subscribers
After adding 87,000 subscribers in 2023, which represented +62% growth, I’d like to accelerate that rate of growth by 50%, to 93%, and add another 211,000 subscribers in 2024. To do that we’ll need to find the sweet spot of the kinds of videos our ideal viewers want to see, and then find a way to produce them consistently.
#10 – Add 125,000 newsletter subscribers
After adding 51,000 subscribers in 2023, which was +63% growth, I’d also like to accelerate that by 50%, to 95%, adding another 125,000 subscribers to our weekly newsletter.
#11 – Grow to $3 million in revenue (+50%) and $1 million in profit (+250%)
I want to increase our top-line revenue by 50% to $3 million and grow profit 2.5x to $1 million. This would represent a healthy, growing business that is maintaining its margins and giving me the buffer and mental headspace to stay at my creative edge.
#12 – Buy our first investment property
This year I want to start to diversify our finances and purchase our first investment property, whether it’s a residential rental, a commercial space, a piece of empty land, or something else. I’m looking for someone experienced in such investments to coach me through the process of evaluating the options and completing the transaction, who would be willing to let me document the entire experience for public consumption. Let me know if you’re interested!
For my life:
- Make our household a calm, clean, organized space that promotes presence, peace, and togetherness
- Make regular trips to events, restaurants, concerts, museums, galleries, and other cultural experiences in LA
- Spend more time in nature with the kids
- Cook nearly all our meals from scratch at home from nutritious, organic ingredients
- Start playing the piano again
- Take my multivitamin every day
- See our friends weekly for play dates, lunches, dinner, or walks
- Work out three times per week
- Meditate for 15 minutes every day
- Take regular vacations as a couple, as a family, and with our own families and friends
- Be more present and mindful at home with Lauren, Caio, Delia, and Ximena, instead of spending time on devices, worrying about work, and mind-wandering
Open questions for 2024
To close out my 2023 year-end review, these are the open questions (which I like to call “favorite problems”) I’m holding as we enter the new year.
- How can I make irreversible (or not easily reversible) decisions to preserve my willpower?
- How can I diversify my sources of income and meaning?
- What experiences do I want to have with Caio and Delia over the next 10-15 years while they’re small?
- How can I integrate cooking into my routines such that it’s easier, faster, and more enjoyable than eating out?
- What would life be like without coffee? How would I produce intellectual breakthroughs otherwise?
- What would it look like to make decisions centered completely on what I want?
- What does my jealousy of other people tell me is missing in my life?
- What makes me most angry about the state of the world?
- What do I see that no one else sees?
- What can 130,000 smart, dedicated people not accomplish?
- What is the right balance between quantity/diversity of revenue streams, and being able to maintain and improve them over time?
- What would it look like to make Forte Labs a platform?
My business theme for 2024 is the takeaway from the mastermind retreat I hosted last year: “Curate people, not ideas.”
A personal note
These reviews typically focus on my professional life, but it’s also been a year of tremendous growth and change in my personal life.
2023 was the first year that my business felt like just one aspect of my life, instead of dominating my waking hours. For the first time, I can now think of it as a job that I clock into and out of at the end of the day, like a little game I play to accumulate Internet points. When I finish up at the end of the day, I can close my office door and put it all out of mind to a large extent, which never used to be true.
I think this shift is due to our second child, our daughter Delia, turning one year old and coming into her own. With one kid, you can more or less maintain much of your existing lifestyle, tag-teaming childcare between parents and in-laws and babysitters and pre-school.
But with two kids, that all goes out the window. Now you have staggered nap times and feeding schedules. Each of you always has at least one kid to entertain at all times. There’s a lot more mess and dishes and laundry to clean up every day. And there are far fewer people willing to watch two kids for any significant length of time. We’ve had to completely restructure our lives and that is still very much ongoing.
This shift – from work-obsessed to family-man – has had both clear upsides and downsides.
The upside is that my sources of meaning are much more diversified. When something dramatic or upsetting happens at work, like a staff conflict or legal dispute or failed project, it no longer rocks my world like it would have before. Who cares what an Internet troll thinks of me when I have a loving family who adores me at home? This has given me more calm, peace of mind, and confidence that I can sustain the business for the long term.
But there are also downsides, at least temporary ones. Having to relax my grip on the business, I’ve had to trust the team more to make decisions and carry them out. This week we launched a new program that I was completely out of the loop on, and it’s an amazing (though somewhat unnerving) experience to watch revenue come in that I wasn’t involved with. I’ve had to become much more discerning about which phone calls, collaborations, and projects I say yes to, as my working time is much more limited (my workday ends firmly at 3pm when it’s time to pick up the kids, which would have been unfathomable to my past self).
Stepping away from work as my all-consuming focus, I’ve had to confront the uncomfortable truth that most other areas of my life – especially my nutrition, exercise, self-care, home projects, and relationships – are in dire need of more attention. The only way I know how to produce results in business is to run all the other parts of my life at a low ebb, in “maintenance mode,” so I can funnel every bit of energy into work. That can be justified when the business is growing by leaps and bounds, but now that it’s not, I’m forced to recognize that I’ve been neglecting many of my “areas of responsibility.”
The reason this is confronting is that in most of those areas, I’m performing at a very mediocre level. My exercise habits are mediocre – just enough to not feel like crap. My diet is mediocre – too much sugar and carbs and processed foods. My self-care is mediocre – just enough to keep me sane. My relationships in many cases are mediocre – I’m not showing up for them in a way I’m proud of.
It’s kind of amazing to me that my sense of agency and self-efficacy can be so high at work, and so much lower in these other areas that might seem “easier” at first glance. I don’t feel unique, special, and accomplished when I make a healthy meal or go for a run the same way I do when I reach a milestone on a work project. My work often feels like a fun game with constant surprises and rewards, whereas the rest of life feels like a series of chores I have to dutifully complete.
The reasons and stories behind this disempowerment are another domain I want to explore in the new year. I want to discover what it would look like to feel empowered and accomplished in all of these areas of life, rather than sacrificing some in order to perform in others. I can sense I have a lot of underlying limiting beliefs about scarcity of time and energy that I’ll need to let go of.
Increasingly I feel that kind of personal growth and transformation is my real job. And all the products and projects and apps and frameworks are just implementation details.
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