Focus

Is it just me, or is it impossible to concentrate these days?

Back in the day, when I was a kid, living with my parents and going to school, I would easily knock out a new web project in a weekend.

In fact, my online game Insel-Monarchie took me a bit more than a weekend to get live. Sure, it was on a free subdomain, free hosting and it had no design or even CSS code. It was a simple text-based game. However, from idea (in the shower) to getting it live I probably spent less than 72 hours.

Nowadays, I don’t even dare to think about launching an entire new project in 72 hours. A few years ago I though of launching one new project (more specifically – one new SaaS) per month. The idea was to launch 12 SaaS projects in as many months.

I ended up launching one fairly unsuccessful SaaS project. And since the launch it sort of just sits there and waits for some TLC (Tender Loving Care) – bug fixes and a marketing campaign.

Sure, I grew up, I now have to take care of myself and can’t live for free at my parents’ house. And yes, I also have to take care of others, like my wife and my two kids. So the pressure is definitely more than it used to be back in my kid’s room at my parents’ house.

Once I took care of financial and legal work, admin work, making sure the kids are fed, my wife is happy, the electricity bills are paid and the company is running smoothly and a million other small and large things, there is little time to get very creative and focused on new projects.

I’ve implemented To Do list apps such as ToDoIst, used daily planners such as the Productivity Planner, created a family calendar in Google to plan family commitments better, and so on. In the end, I don’t think it’s ever going to be possible to regain the same sort of focus and creative freedom you had when you were a kid or a teenager. After all, being a husband and dad adds a lot of thoughts to your daily life. I wouldn’t like to miss those thoughts as I love my family, but sometimes it would be nice to have that creative freedom and focus of my teen years back. Even if it’s only for a few days per month.

That’s why I recently thought that a monthly 2-3 day escape from the family to another city in order to fully dive into a major task or new project would be an interesting idea to test out.

I’m not sure on the specifics yet and I’m still in talks with my wife about it. Hopefully by Q2 of this year I can test out one or two of those mini retreats.