When work goes quiet

A founder’s real job is to make high-quality decisions, repeatedly, for years.

16 years building Tech in Asia, 3 daughters arriving along the way, no obvious meltdown (at least on the surface 🤫).

A few friends with young kids, and some soon-to-be parents, have been asking me lately how I did it.

I had a system. It’s not perfect though.

I want to share this in two parts.

1. The first half is the work-heavy half: what I did when the job was full-time-plus and the kids were small. I can talk about that with conviction.

2. The second half is the part I’m still living through: what happens to “work-life balance” when the work variable goes quiet? That half is messier. I don’t really have the answer yet. I’m writing this partly to figure it out.

The work-heavy half

The thing nobody tells you about being a founder with young kids is that constraints can save you, if you let them.

When my eldest was small and Tech in Asia was struggling, I had no spare hours. None.

My Google calendar became a survival tool.

I time-blocked everything. 15 minutes to buy a birthday gift. 20 minutes to reply to a shareholder concern. 2 hours to think deeply about a product direction.

If it didn’t make it onto the calendar, it usually wasn’t important. The blocks gave me structure and pressure. Deadlines gave me momentum.

I also started work early, mostly because I wanted to be present as a daddy. I start work around 6.40am. I use the first ~30 minutes to plan and do quick replies while the kids prepared for school. Then I’d bring them to school myself, so the commute is my dedicated time with them.

I picked Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as my deep-work days. No interruptions as I go into planning, learning, builder mode. I also exercised on deep-work days. Once you find a sport you genuinely enjoy, exercise stops feeling like a drag. I truly enjoy tennis 🎾.

Tuesday and Thursday were people mode: meetings, sales, syncs, listening, good vibes in office. Heavily inspired by PG’s Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.

My default meetings were 30 minutes. One or two topics max. Both sides come prepared. If nobody could clearly explain why the meeting existed, the meeting probably shouldn’t exist. So I’d either improve or kill it.

I also kept my calendar public internally. Anyone could see who I was meeting. It gave colleagues context on what I was focused on, and it often created serendipity.

Every weekday, I set a hard stop at 4:30pm so I could pick up the kids.

Then I’d switch into dad mode → bath time, school prep, dinner, play, reading, bedtime. With three young kids, I made use of the bedtime ritual. Counting down, three, two, one, then sitting still for five to ten minutes in total quietness. It works for us.

After the kids slept, I’d spend time catching up with my wife. Only if really necessary would I work again at night. I tried not to. I wouldn’t recommend it anyway. It’s bad for sleep.

All of this became part of the system because I learned the hard way: you cannot make good decisions when you’re tired, agitated, or unable to focus.

If I had to compress the whole thing into one sentence:

A founder’s real job is to make high-quality decisions, repeatedly, for years.

Once I saw it that way, my system is more than just productivity hacks. It is my way to spend a finite life as a founder to doing great work.

The parenting part connects directly too.

A founder-parent who is burned out tends to make poor decisions at work and shows up at home as an irritated dad (yuck). The systems shouldn’t be separated. One for the company, one for the family.

It’s one system holding both up.

That’s the half I know.

The half I’m still in

I stepped down as CEO at the end of March.

The work variable, which had been tightly integrated into my life for 16 years, went quiet.

What I’m slowly finding out, with some discomfort, is that “work-life balance” stops being a useful frame when one side is missing. 😅

The system I built was calibrated for work + life. Without work, it’s just… life.

Some things still work.

Exercise still works. Bedtime rituals still work. Phone away during dinner still works. Being present with my wife in the evenings is actually better now.

But other things feel strange.

Deep-work days still exist, but there’s no high-stakes project demanding them. I still try to protect Monday mornings sometimes, then catch myself wondering: Eh, for what?

I read. I think. I meet people for coffee. Sometimes I write.

The blocks on my calendar are still there, but they feel different now.

What I’m learning is this: when the work goes quiet, “work-life balance” turns into something else entirely. I just don’t have a name for it yet.

It’s not a break. Definitely not retirement. Not a vacation.

It’s some weird in-between state where the structure I built to protect family time has become the whole day, and family life on its own isn’t structured the same way work was.

There’s also a temptation to start something, anything, just to give the dam a river again.

I’m trying not to react too quickly. But the pull is real. I’m not yet convinced the solution is simply “start another startup.” Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I genuinely don’t know yet.

What I’m landing on, tentatively, is that my system itself is still good. It just needs a different load to push against.

Time blocks for what? Deep work on what?

The system holds. I just need to find something I’m deeply excited about again.

For now, instead of waiting, I’ll keep building and shipping products for joy. Success or failure, one door leads to another.

I’m not at the end of this, tbh. I’m somewhere in the middle of figuring it out.

Still building, exploring. Still struggling a little.

If you’re in a similar place, I’d love to hear what’s working for you.