Balancing Life and the Addiction to Productivity w/ Ayman Elsawah
Ayman discusses the pressure of overworking and the need to find a sustainable work pace, especially for single parents. He emphasizes the importance of unplugging from the constant drive for productivity and suggests planning long-term goals to achieve balance. He also highlights the value of community and support structures in managing work-life balance.
Transcript
That's what makes this idea of going fractional appealing. It's because like early this year, it was like late January, early February. I was like really stressed out and the job market's been terrible and I was stressed out. I was worried about my job and I was getting up super early for work, like 5 AM. You know, trying to get after it, trying to work more hours, right? Work 530 to 530 and, you know, 60 hours a week or more, trying to get more done. 0:30 One morning, my daughter caught me. She was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, 5 a.m., tying my shoes. And she's just like, Daddy, why are you up so early? And I was like, well, I got to go to work, baby. And she's like, but it's super dark outside. What are you doing? And I was like, Well, you know, some daddies want to get up earlier so they can win more money. And she's like, it's not a race, daddy. 1:01 My teacher tells me that it is not a race. Wow. And I was like. I was like, when did she tell you that? And she told me at school, if I win, if I beat someone in a race, you know, and I start saying, I won, I'm the winner, I beat you, she'll quickly come find me and say, it's not a race. And I did not answer that or respond. I just kind of sat there. And then she came in the room, she grabbed my hand and she said, Daddy, 1:33 Does this mean if you start earlier, then you can finish earlier and hang out with us? And I was like, exactly, because I didn't have. The heart to tell her no, like, actually, I'm just getting up so I can spend more time. I'm not going to finish early. I'm starting early so I can keep, you know, have more hours here. So it just got me thinking, man, I think everybody's kind of going through that. I now that I'm a free agent, I do want to find a pace of work that is sustainable well into my 2:05 Talk on information security covering CISO, vCISO, red team, threat modeling, Enterprise Security Weekly, Security Cafe, Getting Into Infosec, Ayman Elsawah, Adrian Sanabria talk on information security covering CISO, vCISO, red team, threat modeling, Enterprise Security Weekly, Security Cafe, Getting Into Infosec, Ayman Elsawah, Adrian Sanabria
Oh man, 100%, 100%. Especially as a single dad, there's a lot of pressure. So, you know, sometimes we throw ourselves into our work. And there's a lot, there's a lot you mentioned there. So one, my thing I'm trying to do this year is do more with less. There becomes this diminishing return where like you work eight twelve something hours you don't get that much return for all the hours you put in right and you hear all the different mantras work smarter not harder this that blah and all of us are trying to escape this rat race 3:03 Like i don't know how what happened here but now we're like how did we get caught in this rat race as a business owner i talk with my business owner friends because entrepreneurship is a lonely journey by default it's a given and so it's good to have the support structure talk with other folks and sometimes you talk to other folks And a lot of times other especially agency owners bring up this notion like why are we doing this like what's going on and it always seems like the grass is green on the other side so the full-timers look at the entrepreneurs and say oh look at what they're doing and then entrepreneurs that look at the full-timers oh they got it easy and everybody has like a side hustle right and then their side hustles have side hustles so what is it like it's like this itch to like do more like so one 3:51 And maybe we're getting a little philosophical here, but we could bring it back to security. Like we're trying to secure the soul, right? Secure the person. We have this thing about being productive. Like you just have to be productive. And if you're not productive, then you're a loser. Right? And we need to undo that learning. Sometimes it's okay to just sit down and be present with your kids and just be there and whatnot. So we're kind of addicted to productivity. But at the same time, we want to have a comfortable living. We want to make money. 4:22 We want to have stability. We want to have our vacations So how do we break free? I think one of the good things is to do some planning. One of the things that just helped me recently, I planned out my three, five, 10, 15, 20 year goals. And not goals, like you break it up into three things. Who do you want to be? What do you want to be doing? And what do you want to be like? What do you want to have?