Writing this from Pismo Beach before we drive up to San Francisco later today.
Last week was Amazon Accelerate in Seattle. Dan was there with me, then Luke and Sophie flew into LA on Friday. We picked up a rental car and drove up the coast to Pismo.
Saturday and Sunday were basically Toucan strategy days. Long days, big decisions but still enough time to head to the beach and catch the sunset.
Today we drive to San Francisco.
Amazon Ads unBoxed starts tomorrow.
I’m tired…But I’m exactly where I want to be.
I’m much more scared of regret than I am of being tired.
A few days ago, coming back through the airport, one of the border control officers asked where we’d been.
We said Bali and Thailand.
She lit up.
She told us she was fifty and immediately started talking about how much she admired the fact we’d actually gone and done it.
Then she started talking about life in the UK.
She basically said that everything feels like it comes with friction. The weather, the cost of doing things, getting anywhere, organising anything.
Then she admitted that if she had her time again, she’d have moved away years earlier.
Not because her life had gone badly.
She just wished she’d made a different choice while she had more freedom to make it.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how easy it is to assume there will always be another year. Another summer. Another time to travel. There’s never a perfect time so we find ourselves making excuses…”when we have more money” “when the kids are bit older”.
And there probably will be another time.
But one day there won’t be.
And I never want to be the person looking at someone younger than me and thinking, I wish I’d done that when I had the chance.
Despite saying all of this, I don’t actually want an easy life.
I think an easy life would bore me.
What I want is a life where the difficult bits feel attached to something I deliberately chose.
Travel is tiring. Training is tiring. Building businesses is tiring. Raising a family is tiring.
But none of those things currently make me wish I was doing less.
Quite the opposite.
I think there’s a massive difference between being tired because your life is full and being tired because your life is draining you.
From the outside, they can look exactly the same.
They don’t feel the same at all.
The best work leaves me more energised than when I started.
The last two days in Pismo have been intense.
Luke, Dan, Sophie and I have spent most of the weekend working through where Toucan goes next.
There are some things I can’t talk about yet.
We’ve been working on something I genuinely believe hasn’t been done before in our industry in the way we’re trying to do it.
That’s obviously a very big claim.
So I’ll shut up there for now.
But these are the meetings I love.
The bigger questions.
What are we building? Where does our advantage come from in three years, not three weeks? What should we stop doing? What needs to change now for the next iteration of Toucan to be possible?
Those conversations are mentally hard because you actually have to think.
But I never come out of them feeling depleted.
That’s something I’m noticing more.
Some work takes energy from you. Some work gives it back.
These two days were the second kind.
We worked most of Saturday and Sunday, but still made it to the beach, got a gym session in and went out for sunset.
It was a really good weekend.
Working for 6 hours on a Saturday on something you care deeply about feels better than three hours spent doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing anymore.
I want to spend more of my time on the former.
Your routine matters most when your routine disappears.
The amount of damage you can do to your fitness gains in a 10 day work trip is alarming.
I’ve managed to train almost every day this week despite travelling.
Three runs. One Hyrox session. Three lifts.
One of those days was a double session.
Two of the lifts were in the apartment block gym, which was actually surprisingly decent.
The other lift and Hyrox session were at Planet Fitness.
Not ideal…but it did the job.
I’m not saying everybody needs to train seven times while travelling. I’m also not entirely convinced I need to.
But I know how much better I feel when I keep that part of my life moving.
The environment changes but the standard doesn’t have to.
That’s probably why I’ve become less interested in removing all friction from my life.
Training has friction. Travelling has friction. Building something ambitious has loads of friction.
Anything worthwhile probably does.
That airport conversation brought that home for me.
The woman wasn’t telling me she wished life had been easier.
She was telling me she wished she’d chosen differently.
That’s the bit I want to avoid.
Today we drive to San Francisco. unBoxed starts tomorrow.
My legs are tired from training, my brain is full after two days of strategy and I’ve got another full week ahead.
And I’m genuinely excited for all of it.
That's issue twenty five.
Time for coffee.
