I have always been a ‘busy boy’. As a young kid I would always have multiple projects on the go and a new hobby every few months. Not much has changed mid way into my thirties. At the end of each week I am utterly surprised that another 7 days has blown by and wonder what the hell I have been doing!
Running my own business takes it toll at times and it is not uncommon for me to work 60-70 hour weeks. It does however afford me to be somewhat flexible with the hours I work and allows me out from behind the desk to enjoy life outside of Digital Noir.
As a business owner I believe that living an active, varied life is incredibly important. You see some of the ‘entrepreneur gurus’ talking about 90 hour weeks and total commitment or the mirror opposite and the ‘5 hour workweek’. Neither of which I believe are very realistic. Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot. As a business owner you do have to be committed, 150%, and ready to drop anything for the greater good, but you also need to experience the wider world and incorporate those experiences into daily work life.
A good example has been the last few weeks. Digital Noir has been the busiest we have ever been both in terms of workload and staff size. We have had multiple crucial deadlines and also have had staff away for various reasons. I myself have been planning for a 3-week trip (I am actually writing this on the plane, 2 hours out of London). In between all of this I decided that it would be a good idea to join a competitive BBQ team and cook in our first official comp. This may not sound like a lot of work (it’s just cooking, right?) but when you consider the shortest cook out of a total of 4 is 6 hours and we needed to do some serious practice to get up to scratch, it starts to make sense.
So for the last few months instead of coming home on a Friday night and watching Game Of Thrones I have been brining, injecting, rubbing and slow cooking meat, often waking up 4-5 times during the night to check on the cook. My wife thinks I am mad. The challenges are worthwhile though. Waking up at 5am to go for a surf or at 3am to check on a brisket keeps me on point. It is far too easy to fall into a life of procrastination and laziness. My philosophy is that I will sleep when I am dead. I will always want more. To learn more each day, to experience new things and to push my own personal boundaries to grow as a person. Aim to be someone Jack Kerouac would be happy to hang around, as he famously wrote…
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
