Design a Life You Don’t Need a Break From
The biggest life hack of all
What I’ve learned about building a life that feels aligned, expansive, and truly mine.
I used to think the goal was freedom.
When I was deep in the build phase at ContentCal, working relentlessly with my team to raise money, scale fast, and build something that mattered, freedom felt simple in theory: exit, earn, and life would be good.
At 31, when we sold ContentCal, people congratulated me like I had reached the summit. But the truth is, I woke up the next day, and felt almost the same.
In fact I was more confused what life was all about.
I still had back-to-back meetings. I still felt wired. I still felt like the horizon was always moving just a bit further out of reach.
That was the first lesson: freedom isn’t financial alone.
Because if your mind is trapped in loops of anxiety, proving yourself, endless ambition without recovery, or living out other people’s definitions of success, then no amount of zeros in your bank account will save you from yourself.
What does it really mean to design a life you don’t need a break from?
It’s a phrase I hear thrown around like a wellness cliché, often next to photos of sunset beaches and remote work setups. But designing a life you don’t need a break from is not aesthetic minimalism. It’s not about working from cafes in Bali or selling everything to backpack forever (unless that is truly your calling).
It’s about something deeper: living in alignment with who you really are, what energises you, and what feels like the most authentic expression of your skills and values.
How I learned this lesson
In the years after the ContentCal exit, I stayed on at Adobe for three years. I worked between London and Silicon Valley, seeing the inside of billion-dollar product building that I’d only imagined before. It expanded my thinking. It gave me incredible opportunities and friendships.
I also saw how uniquely positioned California is for living a life of hard work, but not necessarily sacrificing everything for it.
You don’t have to ‘sell your soul’ to be successful.
I saw people who were building quietly, intentionally, with their health, family, and mind intact. People who took long walks mid-afternoon without guilt. People who left meetings early to train. People who built massive companies, but didn’t lose themselves in the process.
That’s when I realised: the real game is not just what you build. It’s how you live while you build it.
Why most people build lives they want to escape from
It starts subtly.
You say yes to things out of guilt. You fill your calendar with back-to-back calls. You design your day around other people’s demands. You optimise for output, not clarity. You put off thinking about the bigger questions:
What actually matters to me?
What do I want my life to feel like day to day?
Where am I trading my peace for progress?
And before you know it, years have passed, and your life feels like a treadmill that just keeps speeding up.
Thinking big requires thinking deeply
In Silicon Valley, I saw a different pace of thinking. People took months to plan five-year bets. Founders went on silent retreats to make decisions about company direction. Investors blocked days just to read, think, and walk. Because they knew: big thinking requires space.
And space requires intentional design.
One of the reasons I felt burned out post-exit is because I had designed my days for productivity, not clarity. I knew how to work hard, how to lead teams, how to raise money, how to build products. But I didn’t know how to sit with myself, think deeply, and hear my own intuition beneath the noise.
You are not your work
One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is this: if your identity is purely tied to what you build, you will always feel fragile.
Because companies change. Markets shift. Success waxes and wanes. But if your sense of worth is rooted in something deeper, your values, your vision, your capacity to stay grounded in chaos, then no external shift can truly destabilise you.
It took me years to understand that.
For so long, I wore the badge of “founder” like it was my entire self. When things went well, I felt strong. When things faltered, I felt terrible.
Now, I see work as an expression of who I am, not the totality of it.
Figuring out who you are
Building a life you don’t need a break from starts with clarity.
Clarity about your values. Your energy rhythms. What fuels you vs drains you. Who you want to build with. Where you feel most alive.
These questions aren’t abstract:
What do I actually care about in my work beyond money or status?
What kind of people do I want around me daily?
What environment brings out my best thinking?
What are my non-negotiables for health, calm, and recovery?
What problems do I want to spend the next decade solving?
Without these answers, you’re just living by default, executing someone else’s blueprint.
Small breaks create big resilience
People think designing an aligned life requires massive shifts. Sometimes it does. But often, it’s small decisions layered over time.
Ten minutes of stillness between calls.
Five minutes of nasal breathing before bed.
Walking outside at lunch instead of scrolling.
Calling someone you love, mid-week, just to talk.
Taking a full hour to train without guilt.
Small breaks reset your nervous system, your hormones, your mind. They create micro-moments of safety in a life that can otherwise feel like constant threat detection.
The importance of vacations and changing your environment
Environment shifts remain critical.
Every trip I take resets my thinking. Walking through the greenery of Norway, Temples in Japan, old towns in Italy, the streets of Singapore, every place adds a layer to how I see the world, business, opportunity, human behaviour.
Your environment shapes your creativity. Changing it regularly expands your capacity to solve problems in ways your home office never will.
Broaden your horizons beyond your industry
Most founders I know consume startup content endlessly.
They read the same books. Listen to the same podcasts. Follow the same X voices.
But some of my best business ideas came from outside tech:
Studying Stoic philosophy for emotional resilience
Reading history for strategic insight
Learning boxing for nervous system training
Observing hospitality brands for customer experience design
If your inputs are narrow, your outputs will be too.
Family, work, wealth — an integrated design
Now, my life design considers:
Family. Time with them that isn’t distracted by Slack pings or mental to-do lists. Fully present meals, conversations, play.
Work. Building JAAQ to change the mental health landscape, but doing so with strategic clarity, an amazing team, and systems that don’t require me to be everywhere at once.
Wealth. Investments that buy back time, not just things. Aligning money with meaning.
Health. Not just fitness for aesthetics, but strength and resilience to handle the demands of what I build.
Calm. The ability to hold complexity without crumbling. To make clear decisions when stakes are high.
Additional themes woven into my life design
Presence > productivity.
You can build billion-dollar companies and still hate your life if you’re never present to experience it.
Clarity > speed.
It’s tempting to rush. But it’s far better to pause, decide wisely, and move cleanly.
Wellness = infrastructure.
Breathwork, sleep, training, recovery, these aren’t lifestyle hacks. They are the foundation your leadership rests upon.
Design = choice.
If you don’t choose how you live, someone else will choose it for you.
What I want for myself and you
I want to build companies that matter, with people I love working with, in a way that energises me rather than empties me. I want to be strong in body, clear in mind, grounded in spirit. I want my life to feel spacious, even when it’s full. I want to go to bed feeling used up in the best way. That I spent my energy on things that mattered.
I want wealth to create optionality, not obligation. I want my partner to feel loved, not just provided for. I want to look back decades from now and know that I didn’t just build great companies, but lived a great life.
Final thought
Designing a life you don’t need a break from isn’t a one-off goal.
It’s a practice.
It’s saying no to what looks shiny but feels hollow.
It’s saying yes to what feels expansive, even if it scares you.
It’s building systems that protect your peace as fiercely as your profits.
It’s remembering that work is a tool for expression, not an identity to hide behind.
It’s choosing presence over productivity, clarity over chaos, calm over speed.
Because at the end of it all, what’s the point of building anything, if you never get to feel truly alive living it?