We'll see how it goes

So, for the past five years I’ve been surviving and not thriving. So I’ve started a new project to try and fix that - “Thriving at thirty”. I know I’m technically 33 but I liked the simple alliteration and a small inaccuracy in the title isn’t going to cause it to fail - I hope.

So, naming aside the aim of the project is to focus on three things: family, fitness and fulfillment.

Family

Lockdown has made everything different but especially the stress of looking after two kids in a house where you can’t go anywhere for months on end. The kids are amazing but it really reminds me of glass of water stress example. Schools, nursery, friends and family give me and my partner some much needed alone time which we can’t get anymore. So my wife needs more support to get her alone time before she burns out. Also, my kids are only going to be kids for so long. Everyday they grow and develop. Spending 12 hours out of the house working and eight asleep does not leave a lot of time to spend with them. Especially when I’m trying to work on side projects in the weekends. I need to spend more time with them.

Fitness

Spending 12 hours on work days out of the house sat down apart from the occasional tea run or walk at lunch is not conducive to a healthy lifestyle. So I’ve getting some what less than the NHS recommended 150 minutes of exercise. Also my diet is erratic at best where I skip breakfast most days and then gorge at lunch or dinner but barely hit 2,000 calories a day. So if I’m going to increase my activity I need to increase those calories and not just by eating chocolate or KFC.

Fulfillment

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to run my own business; build my own products and take ideas from conception to delivery. I’ve done the building part quite successfully for a long time but the rest I really only know the theory - I’ve never done it and I want to.

The plan

So given all of the above I’ve made a few changes. At the end of April I handed in my notice and ended by current contract. Luckily I’ve been saving for the last five years for a wedding and house renovation and since we have cancelled the wedding, the renovation is delayed and lockdown has caused my expenses to go through the floor - no nursery, no petrol and no holiday. So since the end of May I’ve been free as a bird so I’ve taken a couple of weeks to hang out with the kids and give Elina some time for herself.

Now to the actual work. Time and kids around mean that the family time should work out for itself especially if I don’t lock myself away. Making time for Elina to have a break and helping the girls with their homework and playing in the garden in the summer will be much easier if I can pick which days are the weekends.

Exercise and diet - these are all about discipline so I’ve spoken to Elina and she as promised to give me a prod in the morning to go for a run and help me with calorie counting. Elina is an expert in the apps and options available here so I’m going to be relying on her to steer how this goes. The girls have been following along with PE with Joe every morning so on top of running this will easily get me over 30 minutes a day and also gives me another thing to do with the kids.

Now, the tricky one. The scariest one. Building something for myself. This is the most nebulous and the one that is most likely to fail. The plan is finish an existing project (Park Bath) and then to try some ideas that have been I’ve been adding to a note book for a few years. I know this is a bad answer but I think if I can dedicate some time to it then I’ll at least build some stuff and learn a lot about marketing and validating an idea.

Finally I plan to document this here and on YouTube just so I can document my progress and share my failures with anyone interested.