How being a CEO taught me how to enjoy my time back @my parents’ house.

A little reflection

Hi there,
I’m a 22-year-old Italian guy and I’ve been living in London for the past 4ish years. The first one and a half my own; the past two with my girlfriend, but that’s another story.

My very first reaction when I moved was, of course, to be panic stricken. I was only 18 and all of a sudden, most of the things I used to take for granted turned into a task, a responsibility or a chore.

From doing to the grocery to turning on the washing machine, my first days were full of the most boring challenges ever.

In that period going back home was an obvious relief. For few days there was nothing on my back, no precise tasks.

Those few Hakuna-Matata-y days were giving me the possibility to lighten the burden of living on my own.

But, six months later, the positive aspects took over. I started to get used to that complete freedom that only living on your own gives you. I got a taste of space, time management, and independence, and it was delicious.
As a result, I started to have a different perspective on what it meant to be back at my parents’ place. Of course, I was happy to see them, together with my sisters, and spend time with them but I started to feel trapped.

All that tasty freedom was taken away from me as soon as I was stepping back in the house.

And I was kind of blaming my parents for that. Not in a direct or accusatory way, but I was simply stating that ‘it was not my cup of tea anymore’ and that the reason for that was the lack of freedom.

Now, my parents never had strict house rules, they didn’t tell me when to get up nor when to eat. So why was I so upset about losing my freedom if there were no strict rules?
Was it really about the freedom or there was something else?
I spent almost 2 years believing the first option, but now I am leaning toward the latter…

I started questioning the reason for that problem six months ago and at the same time, I started to feel what it is like to be a CEO of a startup. A small one, but still a startup.
You start to have people to manage. You have deadlines to meet. You have to make sure that everybody is happy, and happily meeting the deadlines.
So, your job becomes the one of a facilitator, together with a decision maker. You have the crucial role of the glue-guy, and you still need to have your own tasks done.
I struggled at the beginning as I did not understand the importance of being flexible and being able to synchronize with the rest of the team. When I was doing something I was not able to dedicate my time to someone else’s problem, simply because I was busy.

I was structuring my timetable with no regards for other team members’ needs and I was pretty clearly being a very bad glue-guy. Handling problems when you like is definitely not the best way to help the rest of the team. Nor it is not being productive because that day you ‘took care of someone else’s problem’.

The game-changer was when I realised the importance of flexibility, whilst studying the agile methodology.

The core idea of this methodology is that problems will catch you off guard. Unexpected issues will knock at your door when you are doing other things and you do need to structure your workflow bearing that in mind. You have to be able to quickly respond to external stimuli and then go back to what you were doing.
You need to train yourself to rapidly switch from ‘doing something’, to ‘listening to someone’s problem’, to ‘giving immediate feedback’, to a LOT of other things.
That ability, that being able to adjust the wavelength of your timetabling to external factors, not only changed my daily working routine. It also made me understand that it was not my parent’s fault that I was feeling ill at ease back home. I was the one not being able to understand and synchronise my daily routine with my family’s.

Before understanding that, my timetable and my parents’ one were pretty different. This situation was not even giving me the possibility to make the most out of the time that I had.
The past month, I’ve spent a lot of time back home for business reasons and I managed to stress-test my theory. I changed my timetable according to my family’s one.
The results have been amazing: I managed to spend more time with them whilst being as productive as I would be at my place in London.

Now I’m heading back to my flat in Deptford, London. I feel like I managed to solve the problem that many of us have encountered. I’ve been able to have little-to-no stress when going back to my parents, and that is a hell of an achievement.