Since October, I have been working 100+ hour weeks. That is not a flex, that is a confession. Fifteen to eighteen-hour days, weekends included, with short breaks for food, showers, and pretending to sleep. If work were an Olympic sport, I would be standing on the podium in a blazer, holding a gold medal and a mild caffeine tremor.
There comes a point for every builder when the Google Calendar feels more intimate than actual relationships. Mine came somewhere between “Finalize Q4 Budget Forecast” and “Pick Up Laundry (if time permits).” Spoiler: there was no time.
For years, I had been in what I call “beast mode.” Late nights. Early mornings. “I’ll just take this call real quick” during what should have been downtime. Building, scaling, optimizing… all the verbs you would use to describe someone preparing for a moon landing. Only instead of landing on the moon, I landed at my desk upstairs in my office, eating dinner alone, while the world outside kept moving without me.
I told myself it was noble. “I’m doing this for the future.” Somewhere along the way, “for the future” turned into “instead of living now.” My mental highlight reel was full of closed deals, new partnerships, meetings with big brands, and celebrating our hyper growth. I could tell you our monthly burn rate to the penny, but not the last conversation I had that was not about work.
The worst part? I started treating human connection like a side project. Measurable KPIs. Action items. Deliverables. I once scheduled “meaningful conversation” for after my email backlog. That is the emotional equivalent of offering someone leftovers in a takeout box.
In the process of letting go, you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.
The uncomfortable truth is that “many things” can sometimes include people, and you may not notice until the seats around you are empty.
No one warns you about this. We are taught to guard against burnout. We are told to manage stress. But the slower poison is how ambition reframes time spent with people as an interruption to the “real” work.
Here is what I know now: growth at the expense of connection is not growth. It is just construction. You might build the tallest tower in town, but if there is no one on the roof with you when you get there, the view is underwhelming.
So I am trying a new strategy. It is called being present. Which, ironically, is harder than running a company. It means stopping when the moment calls for attention. It means booking quality time before sales calls. It means blocking sacred time and refusing to compromise because that time is for sharpening the axe—honing relationships, recharging my own batteries, and enjoying the results of my work as much as the work itself.
Success is when reality catches up to your imagination
For me, that means building a life worth imagining and making sure I am actually there to live it.
Until next time,
