I squinted at the road in front of me. My brain was so fogged, I wasn’t sure if I took the highway exit, although it was five seconds ago. After a few seconds, a familiar signboard came into view. I heaved a sigh of relief and pulled over by the rest stop. I was already falling asleep as I reclined my driver’s seat. I sank back into the seat for a 10 minute nap. It was 1 am.
It’s been a year since I resolved to change my life. I posted sporadic updates on this blog until, on Christmas eve 2018, I wrote one last post and disappeared.
What happened in the last six months was remarkable. As a quick recap, in July 2018 I decided to change my life by changing my habits. I made a list of five habits to change and tracked them. I followed through to the end of December. In this December 11 post I alluded to a few potential breakthrough deals. There were three such deals, and any one of them would make a difference.
Before I get to that though, some updates on the habit-changing effort. In January I made the mistake of “improving” my Airtable habit-tracking setup. I tweaked the format to better reflect what I wanted to achieve. Surprise— It didn’t catch on. I couldn’t get used to the new format and stopped tracking all habits within the space of a few weeks. There’s an important lesson to learn here: Don’t do things that mess up your good habits.
By mid March, I had stopped on all habit-changing efforts. But this wasn’t because of a lack of tracking. Out of the three potential deals, we secured one in early January. And before that contract was even drawn up, we secured another huge project in early February.
So what happened was that the five months between February to the end of June was the most hectic in of my life. Never has more been at stake. We were so far out of our comfort zone, we couldn’t even grasp the edges of what we didn’t know.
Now, in July 2019, we have delivered both projects. It wasn’t perfect. A little rough around the edges. Many lessons to unpack. A few ruffled feathers. We delivered what we said we would. But we could do much better at client management and communication.
It was an ambitious effort, and the bad thing was that it took us to the brink of burnout. I thought in July we would be able to take a short break. Hahahahahaha. Nope, no way. I looked at the calendar and my soul-crushing conclusion was: Break? Check back in August.
So now here we are, one year on. I can safely say implementing good basic habits work. Get more sleep, get more exercise, plan and prioritise, and reflect often. That was all! By doing so, it took us from the edge of death to where we are today. It is still way too early to call this as a breakthrough or success, but at least our survival is safe for the time being.
I woke up from my nap in the car, engine still running. My first thought was that this happened a year ago as well. Late night, long-distance driving when tired. Rushing from task to task, unable to cope with information and work overload. During the five months of superhuman effort, I didn’t manage to keep up the five habits. And if this continues, I already know what will follow— downward spirals, problems blowing out of proportion, cascading effects. As night follows day.
This year of tracking and reflection has yielded incredible results. Mistakes we made revealed a different sort of bad habit. Bad habits around mental models, planning and management attitudes. This is the challenge for this year. How to develop habits for growth and scale while avoiding burnout. As we grow, so do we further develop and flex our muscles, and learn and reflect from our past.