Ironman Update

I’m 62 days into my work non-stop Ironman quarter. I’ve got 28 left.

I wanted to offer a bit of an update since so many of you are following and asking how it’s going. On the bright side, I’ve never been more efficient and we’ve never been more successful. Just about all the pieces of the agenda are kicking butt and when you don’t take a day off the ball you seem to find time to address even the long term problems. Being exhausted is a bit of a benefit as well because instead of being pissed off and taking it on my staff I can just say – “hey, you fucked up, can’t go back to fix it but let’s make sure we never have it happen again”. The other benefit of not having recharging time is actually being aware how much time certain things take and how often they come up – when I had weekends that reset made last week seem like ages ago. Last month? Don’t even remember that long ago. Now it’s all fresh and it’s all a few days ago or few days ahead.

Biggest benefit – no slacking and no procrastination. I’m human, I’m prone to it. I used to bump things from one week to the next – now there is no bumping, it’s all right there in front of me.

Now the bad news. I’m tired. Exhausted is actually a better description. I no longer find much joy in eating – it’s pretty much a to-do item. My sleep pattern is random (though most of that is thanks to our new son and our new puppy). I am more aware of little annoying things that I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t notice otherwise. I don’t have any energy to exercise or really do anything at all. I’ve gained about 5lb.

So there you have it – over two months of straight workdays and yeah, it’s not a fairy tale. Much like any endurance test, it hurts and it feels really stupid at times. Question I often get: Would you do it again? No, this was a one-time thing as I hand off a lot of my responsibilities and prepare the company for the years ahead – you’ve already seen the ExchangeDefender developments, the other day you saw CloudBlock, there are lots of cool things happening at Shockey Monkey – so once we cross this bridge and fill the holes in the portfolio we have now – things are pretty much going to go about 4-5x faster. I wouldn’t do it again. But knowing what I know now, would I do it all over again if I had a chance – oh hell yeah!

Oh, and I’m taking April off. Going to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Bahamas. Gonna spend the entire month as a father, husband, drunken monkey.