The Accordion of Life

Read time: 6 minutes

Welcome to The Ascend Archives, a weekly newsletter where I share a story about a transformation, revelation, or change in thinking that has improved an aspect of my life.

The default story I’ve been telling myself for the past year has been all or nothing. 

It didn’t matter whether I was making decisions about my business, health, or what I wanted to do for fun. 

I wanted to quit my job to pursue entrepreneurship? Guess I had to buy a business that would replace my entire income in the first year.

I wanted to create content online? Guess I had to start posting on LinkedIn and Twitter every day and send out two newsletters per week.

I wanted to live a healthy, active lifestyle? Guess I had to train for an Ironman 70.3.

I wanted to go on a hiking trip? Guess I had to climb the tallest mountain in Africa. 

“Go Big or Go Home” was stitched across my forehead.

This served me well in some instances. Heck, I saw the sunrise from above the clouds at 19k feet on Mt Kilimanjaro. I went from commuting 2 hours per day to a job that stressed me out to being able to work from anywhere in the world. I swam 1 mile, biked 55, and ran 13 in just under 6 hours and crossed the finish line with a smile on my face. 

Other times though, this mentality led to unnecessary stress and prevented me from taking action on things that I wanted.

Personal Best or Bust

In 2019, I was one year out of college, working 60 hour weeks and believed my peak athletic days were behind me. I knew the importance of staying healthy but I couldn’t hold a consistent workout routine. 

So to hold myself accountable, I signed up for a sprint triathlon. I found a training program, signed up for the local gym with a pool, and stuck to the program for 10 straight weeks - swimming, biking, and running 6 days per week. 

I completed the race and fell in love with everything about the sport - the variety of workouts, atmosphere on race day, and sense of accomplishment crossing the finish line. 

After 5 years (4 triathlons and 2 half marathons later), working out has become part of who I am. I am in the best shape of my life and now look forward to runs around Lady Bird Lake, swims in the pool, and tough workouts at the gym.

But after finishing the Ironman 70.3 last May, my mind defaulted to what is the next race? I ran the half marathon at a 7:44 pace after swimming a mile and biking 55 miles. So naturally, my competitive juices wanted to see how fast I could run it without swimming or biking first.

So now here I am getting ready to run a half marathon next week in under 1 hour and 30 minutes. That has meant waking up on 3 out of the last 4 Saturday mornings to run half marathons, 3 days a week of lifting, foam rolling, and sauna sessions, and being on top of my meal prep.

This has taken a toll on my body over the past 15 weeks and taken energy away from other parts of my life.

From Getting to Know You to Getting Comfortable

I started dating an amazing gal about 6 months ago. From the beginning, I loved our walks around the lake, engaging conversations over ice cream, and exploring neighborhoods around Austin.

In the early days of getting to know someone, momentum is important. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that.

After our first date, I went to California for my Ironman, then she left for a 2 week trip to Europe. Life got busy when about 2 months later, I got a text from her “Hey Andrew, it’s been a minute, but I’m back from France. Let me know if you want to catch up sometime!”

I of course took her up on it. We got smoothies and walked around the lake. Over the next few weeks, we had some great dates but there was no consistency. We’d have a great night getting dinner and ice cream, then not see each other for a week. The only communication in between was a few texts planning the next date. After about 4 weeks of this, I was leaving again - this time it was one month in Africa. 

You could say the beginning of our relationship was a bit choppy. 

But when I got back from Africa, we had a serious conversation about being more intentional about seeing each other. That meant planning concerts & basketball games, FaceTime calls during the week, surprise lunch dates…and most of all a pause on traveling!

This intentionality brought us closer together. We started to get in a flow where it didn’t feel like we had to start over each time we hung out. We got into a routine of hanging 4+ nights a week and I was loving it. 

But more time with her also meant less time spent with friends, going to networking events, and working on my business. 

Expanding and Contracting the Accordion

Entering into 2025 my health and relationship were 10/10s…maybe even 12/10s. 

However, when I looked at my business, I was a 6/10. I was making just enough to cover my expenses, but I had the ambition to make more. Things were good, not great.

I knew that I needed to shift more time & energy into the business if I wanted to scale, but something was holding me back and I couldn’t figure out what.

On a call with my business coach Barrett, he asked me to close my eyes and envision what it would feel like to achieve my desired business goals (e.g., making X amount of money). I sat back in my chair, closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and started to visualize it. Quickly, my palms started to sweat and the vein in my forehead started to throb. 

What I saw when I envisioned my business making more money was what all the best founders say it takes to be successful: working 70 hour weeks, never seeing their family, and being out of shape. I believed “Putting in the work” and obsessing over the business was the only way to be successful. That meant ignoring all the other aspects of life that I worked so hard to build over this past year.

I wanted no part of that. 

After sharing my reaction with Barrett, he said “I like to visualize my life buckets like an accordion - I can expand and contract each bucket depending on what season I’m in. It doesn’t have to be an on / off switch.”

That hit. Barrett is a successful guy running the kind of business I aspire to. Maybe it was possible. 

I want to scale my business, but maybe I don’t have to throw away all those other things, I just need to contract the accordion a bit. 

I thought about my health. Do I need to race Ironman 70.3s and crazy fast half marathons to stay healthy? Definitely not. I needed to sign up for races 6 years ago to keep myself accountable to working out, but since then staying fit has become my identity. So now I can maintain my health without intense training 6 days per week.

I thought about my relationship. We’ve known each other for 8ish months and have become much more comfortable. Would it be ok to cut out seeing each other multiple nights during the week so that I could attend networking events, do some extra work, or get a full night sleep? I wasn’t sure, but I laid out all my thoughts with her and she was totally cool with it. 

It comes down to a few key questions: what am I optimizing for and what season am I in? 

For health, I want to maintain my health now so that when I’m 70 years old, I can spend time with my family, travel, and play with my grandkids. I’m not optimizing to race at the Ironman World Championships. Yes, I still want to compete in these races because they are fun but it doesn’t have to be every year. 

For my relationship, I realized that we were past the initial getting to know you phase, so it was okay to make a shift towards more time in the business. The key was communicating my intentions with her, and making sure we aligned expectations to continue building our relationship together. 

It seems like there is never a perfect balance of the accordion - it will constantly be changing. 

All I  can do is constantly check in on it, communicate where I'm at with the people in my life, and do the best I can not to get too far to one extreme or the other. 

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew