The last ten months have been draining, scary, hard and challenging.

They have been the best ten months of my life.

These life events that have taken place for me over this time are monumental.

Having children, starting a company and moving country are ranked as some of the biggest life changing events which you can experience.

Most people struggle with undertaking one of these events in a year, so how have I coped with undertaking three within such a short time of each other?

The answer is surprisingly well.

“A man needs a little madness, or else… he never dares cut the rope and be free.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

Instead of it being harder tackling all the challenges presented by these events all at the same time, it has actually made things easier…

By having these experiences simultaneously you get a sense of freedom as you feel less restricted by the everyday realities and adrenaline and excitement propel you day to day and ensures that you keep moving ahead positively.

You are living in a bubble of constant uncertainty but instead of this overwhelming you as you might expect, this bubble helps free you from the restraints of the fear of failure.

The Benefits of “batching”

These life changing events take their toll mentally and physically but by batching them closer together we can actually limit the amount of times that we need to go through the inevitable upheaval that they bring into our lives.

It is a similar approach to the way we approach daily tasks just on a grander scale. All the research in terms of productivity tells us that we should always do the most difficult task, and the one we are fearing first. This way we get it out of the way, and we feel a happiness and accomplishment which allows us to have an even higher productive rest of day.

So, why not apply this to a larger time scale, and look at the period of your life rather than just a day.

Well, by tackling your daunting life changing events in one go you can achieve a similar sense of accomplishment on a much larger scale and by facing them head on and doing as many as you can in one push, it can enable you to live your life in a more productive, efficient and most importantly, less stressful way.

Applied learning

These simultaneous experiences can also help you deal with each of them on an individual basis more efficiently, as many have similarities with each other and you can apply lessons learned in one to another with ease, whereas these lessons, experiences and feelings will be harder to recall when you need them in the future.

During the first couple of weeks of a child's life, they are unable to provide you with any feedback and interaction is limited. It was hard for my partner and I to know whether we were doing the right thing or not for Alfred at times during these first couple of weeks. However, we knew that within time he would have the capabilities to provide feedback and after a month, he would smile when we did something for him that he liked.

This patience I acquired through this process, of persisting without receiving feedback and therefore not knowing whether to continue down the path you have gone, served me extremely well in the early days of my business when feedback is scarce and you only have your gut to rely on. I knew to be patient and that feedback would come once people were ready to provide it to me, and to trust my instincts in the meantime.

The deepest of deep ends

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.

Niccolo Machiavelli, “The Prince”