Dreams and Whims
Off-Grid
Workwise, I've been rather off-grid recently. When I say recently, I mean since I took the plunge to be a ‘stay at home Dad’ which was over 2 years ago in July 2018. I have been balancing that with volunteering for the brilliant Home-Start, a handful of consulting gigs and continuing my education, but broadly speaking, my focus has shifted to the thing that matters most, family.
Priorities
Leaving my previous job as ‘Chief Experience Officer’ was extremely difficult but knew it was the right thing for me and my family. I still look back with rose-tinted glasses like you do for your first love (credit for this analogy goes to a neighbour and brilliant design director, Oli), despite having several great jobs in my career there was something special about Red Badger. I love how the design and the tech industry has changed over the past 2 decades — the business world is more aware than ever of the value of Design across their organisations and not something that was exclusively part of ‘User Interface’ design and marketing. I knew that my time there had run its course and as a family, we had a chance for my partner to focus on her career; that meant I had to commit to being primary kid carer, house cleaner and a general homebody. This was a significant opportunity to get to know my kids in a fundamentally different way and to ensure that I would never experience that infamous regret you hear time and time again. “I wish I spent more time with the kids”. Oh, and I also got good at batch cooking! :)
Dreams and Whims
Up until the point at which I became a stay at home Dad, full-time, I have always had one eye on something else, something more, the next promotion or next job. That is why, to some extent, I have enjoyed the upward trajectory of my career. Nobody teaches you that ‘just being’ is good enough, society is skewed towards academic, professional or financial success and so letting these go has proven to be one of the biggest challenges of my career.
Our perpetual busyness is fuelled by a culture that derides or trivialises the need to stop
Josh Cohen
Trying to find the elusive work-life balance is infamously difficult and too many people give lip service to the concept without living it. As a result, a work-life balance becomes the concept of spending 8 hours a day in the office getting home for bedtime with the kids and ensuring you can do nice stuff at the weekend. This misses the point of balance. It is not about attaining equal time working vs time not working, it’s about living your life all the time. How present are you with your loved ones and kids? How happy are you?
We all have different thresholds and triggers for happiness and so we have to be mindful of our own needs; what will make us happy at home and what will make us happy in our professional lives? Spoiler alert, you can’t find the answer in a book.
Many books have been written about how to find the nirvana of a work-life balance but the truth is you can’t apply a template or process to find your happy place. You *might* be able to, but don't count on it lasting indefinitely and prepare to continually try out new things.
So having struggled with trying to find my own balance I decided to try and direct my focus on to projects that were going to keep my brain engaged in tech and design, do good for the world and make me feel good, whether or not they succeeded. I love my job as a Dad, but also feel the need to build something else, external that can ultimately provide for us in the future. It feels like it's the innate human need to hunt. The caveat is that it has to happen in between kids drop off, pick up, cooking and cleaning.
Is there scope for building a successful start-up without sacrificing time with the family?
I got involved in a blockchain start-up which quickly ran its course and then got involved in running some experiments in the world of cashless donations for people who normally receive loose change. We ran a bunch of experiments but quickly realised that it was not a viable business. One idea that I kept coming back to was bicycle servicing — yes, a mobile bike mechanic business! Innovative?
Looking back to write this post, I’ve realised that I started having dreams of a bicycle startup in July, the same month I left my last full-time job. Studying at London Business School was great — many ideas, dreams and whims occurred daily. There was no shortage of inspiration with so many fellow students brimming with the excitement of endless possibilities.
The Mess
Fast forward through months of studying, parenting, playing with ideas and tinkering with bicycles; today, the idea has developed into an all-inclusive, hassle-free, eBike leasing proposition. It’s been really messy fun!…but the time to test the proposition before wasting any money or time on it has arrived. So this blog post is a public declaration and line in the sand. To this end, we’ll be doing this in the open and documenting our approach. Wish us luck and watch this space.
On it!
https://open.spotify.com/track/4PUkcSfWNB1K8AK1j3hBEY?si=IWzaB8F3Qo-TSlpjzMDbGw
