After a week of chaos where sleep was non-existent and I found the stresses of running a business to be slightly overwhelming, I managed to disconnect for the long weekend, stuff my face full of Easter eggs, and get some perspective on what it takes to build something sustainable.
I don’t have any mind-bending answers - it’s all common sense. But once again, I reflect on the fact that when stressful weeks happen, I fall off the wagon when it comes to my exercise, my diet, my social interactions, and everything that would fuel me up.
This makes the work that much harder to do because you’re empty.
When I was younger, I looked at Elon Musk as a beacon of ‘outworking’ everyone else could accomplish and it fitted perfectly with my personality. But with every year I live on this planet, I’m pushing further and further away from that.
It’s more complicated than just ‘hard work’.
You need leverage on your work. You need strategic breaks. You need to disconnect regularly. You need to be able to delegate. You need to be realistic with how much you take on. You need to sleep. You need to exercise.
All of this is what allows you to work hard over the long-term. Anyone can pull off three all-nighters and tell themselves that they’re going to be successful because they are dominating their competition. But when you can’t function for the next few days after that, your pride takes a hit.
Sustainable hard work over decades requires a certain level of balance, self-care, and restraint to enable your mind and body to get the rest that it needs, so it can go again.
I know all this intellectually, but this past week I didn’t live up to it.
Nevermind, we pick ourselves up and we march on.
New Podcast Episodes
072 - What the Canal?
On this episode of the podcast, we discuss the Evergreen ship that blocked the Suez Canal, Apple Pay coming to South Africa, the first NFT house, RedBull’s insane snow skiing video, Facebook Marketplace, Kate Middleton’s portrait project, an electric bakkie made in South Africa, and finally we get to some long overdue personal development topics to make us better people! It’s a cracker of an episode and we hope that you’ll enjoy it!
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
071 - Changing Our Name to Salmon
On this episode of the podcast, we discuss the rumours about Trump’s social network, an update on the UK lockdown, Taiwan’s salmon chaos, My Octopus Teacher’s Grammy nomination, ‘I Care a Lot’ on Netflix, Microsoft’s rumoured acquisition of Discord, and some practical tips for avoiding excessive screen time. All this and more on the latest episode of Across the Pond.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
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Philosophy is one of those disciplines that is severely underappreciated by the masses because it has hidden itself behind academic jargon, pretentious professors, and mental gymnastics. Yet, I think it holds the key to a good life and Ryan Holiday does a great job of illuminating that in all his writing. This article of his caught my attention this week. (Link)
Most of our information and media diet these days is served to us via an algorithm of some sort. The networks we’ve entrusted with our attention serve us reams of stuff on the basis of what we’ve ‘liked’ before, but more realistically - on the basis of what’s going to keep us engaged. Austin Kleon makes an important cry for browsing outside the algorithms so we can discover new worlds. (Link)
Silence and solitude is something that we all dearly lack in the modern world and you can trace so much of history’s great breakthroughs to times of silence. Here’s a short example from Beethoven. (Link)
I know I’m late to the party here but I only recently discovered the fact that Pink collaborated with the wonderful Ndlovu Youth Choir to do a cover from ‘The Greatest Showman’. It’s magical, of course. (Link)
Staying with music, Bruno Mars exploded back onto the scene after some hiatus by collaborating with Anderson .Paak and delivering a musical masterpiece cloaked in 70s style. (Link)
That’s all for this week. I hope you’ve had a wonderful long weekend, and if you’re celebrating - Happy Easter!
Wishing you all the best for the week ahead.
Be kind to yourself!
Barry