What are you willing to give up?

What are you willing to give up?

This week, I have done a whole lot of soul searching, for reasons I may dive into more in the future, but for the purpose of this newsletter… soul searching was done at a large scale.

I have always thought of myself as someone who maintains perspective in the wake of arbitrary events. I am turning 30 soon, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I want it to not matter. But it does.

Don’t worry, there isn’t a concern around me feeling old and decrepit. My thoughts have all been around the transactions of time I made in my 20s.

I feel like the IRS going through a company’s financials and checking receipts.

The issue is that when you are thinking about something as important as your time, you get hijacked, and all the logic you use for how you could use your time better can always be justified.

All of the decisions you made could’ve been better. All of the opportunities you said yes to, you could’ve said no. All the no’s could've been yeses, etc.

This week, I have been balancing the books and recalculating the frame in which I look at those receipts.

My new frame?

What was I willing to give up then, that I absolutely will not give up now? And vice versa.

There are a few that have stuck out to me. The number one is time with people I love. I feel like this is something I would’ve always said, but now I see it clearly. (I will probably see it even more clearly at 35 and so on.)

Probably the biggest thing I have come to realize concerning these trades: the more something matters to me, the more I have to trade to protect it.

It’s a funny thought. Spending time with those you love is something you can do for free, or at least I hope it is for you. You start to trade things that are bigger than money. You start to trade outcomes in other arenas of your life.

You can still be a successful career person and spend time with those you love, but are you willing to give up time to work on your career for time with your loved ones?

You aren’t giving up your career. You are trading the potential that your career could be for the investment into the people you love.

This isn’t a binary. I want to warn you of a critique you are probably thinking. You will never spend all of your time on one thing, and breakdown-wise, you will probably spend more time working than with your loved ones.

The point is, when there is an intersection where you could spend time on one or the other, which do you choose, and what are you giving up by making that choice?

The Hero’s Journal

When I started The Hero’s Journal with Nick in 2018 (23 years young), my only focus was to build cool things and make a crazy cool resume. I was willing to trade everything for that, and in a lot of ways, I did.

I would get up three hours before work to exercise, read, and have alone time, all so that after work I could go to a coffee shop and work on this crazy idea. I postured my entire life to build the business. There were moments of complete frustration, elation, and everything in between.

It took all of me. But the rest of me was what I was willing to give up for the outcome.

By the time the Kickstarter was funded, I was tapped. But I had done something cool, so the trade was worth it.

Only one problem: physical products get fulfilled in person, and I lived in a different state. No worries, quit my job and moved.

Had to get a new job. One was a better opportunity, but the other allowed me more freedom to build The Hero’s Journal on the side. I turned down the better opportunity.

Through my 20s, there are endless examples of moments where it was clear—the cool thing I was building was the only thing I wasn’t willing to give up.

When it comes to my 20s and the goals I set for myself, I won the trades.

Atypical

Trey has the blessing and the curse of being a professional athlete. The blessing is that you get the freedom of approaching every game and practice like it's your last. Time is not promised, therefore the trades become very clear.

The curse is that time is not promised. Even if he hasn’t gotten out of it what he wants, when the timer hits zero, there is no way to make more time.

One of the things I really respect about him is that I think he is a master of keeping his minutes. Priorities are always in full view, and the perspective he gains because of that helps him move with assurance that you don’t see often.

He’s a friend, but in the case of minutes management, he is a mentor.

Reading

I have not read pretty much at all this week. I did finish Working by Robert Caro. The end of the book was unintentionally very appropriate to this topic. He talks about why he does what he does, and how he does it.

His answer: it’s what he feels like he should be doing.

There is conviction in that. One we all strive to have.

Coffee

I have been in San Francisco all week. I had a coffee with a spicy brown butter syrup. I may have to try and make that for myself.

Conclusion

My last few newsletters have been pretty emotionally forward. I don’t expect it to be that way forever, but this looming end-of-a-decade birthday will probably squeeze a few more out of me.

To be clear, hard work is very important to me.

It is not the most important thing to me.

That is my relationship with Casey.

I realize this newsletter is essentially a love letter to her in a weird way.

So thanks for being a fly on the wall for that.

Happy week,
Kyle