Live and Let By

It was a long day of meetings and discussions at the conference. I returned to my AirBnb, hung my coat in a hanger, sat and bent down to undo my shoes. A searing pain shot through from my lower back through every inch of my whole back. So intense that my scream of pain got stuck somewhere mid-throat, I choked and my vision blacked out for a second. 

For the past month and a half, I've been traveling around multiple cities for work meetings. Not more than a couple of days in a same bed, working out of cafes, airports and trains, walking a lot with a heavy backpack, and sitting long hours on the most un-ergonomic chairs or seats. 

Like many entrepreneurs, I've convinced myself that discomfort is merely the price of progress. After all, businesses do not grow by themselves! A packed schedule after an overnight journey, stretching from breakfast meetings through day-long discussions into late-night emails ? Bring it on, it’s just part of the job! 

But unfortunately, the body does not follow any work calendar. It does not care about growth plans, strategic opportunities or carefully optimized travel itineraries. Inevitably, it is sending signals that it has been keeping score. 

I used to be a wicketkeeper and captain when I played cricket. As the keeper, I learned what it meant to operate under continuous demand. Behind the stumps, there is no real pause. The lower back, hips, shoulders, all of it adapts to a rhythm that does not fully stop for hours at a time. As a captain, there was another layer. You are thinking ahead, remembering the plans and yet needing to change them on the go and making vital decisions while your body is already under strain. Fatigue becomes part of the environment rather than an exception.

Over time, that kind of endurance begins to feel normal. Even desirable. You begin to associate staying in discomfort with staying in control. I think I've brought that same instinct into entrepreneurship without ever naming it.

But cricket, at least at its best, also teaches more subtle lessons. The need to slow things down, to take a breather between overs, and sometimes, even as the captain, let a passage of game progress itself while you just watch it unfold. 

Lying here now, in a bed that’s more soft than what I’m comfortable with and typing away, stretching my neck between sentences, I can feel the thin line between discipline and depletion. Entrepreneurship often rewards the ability to stretch limits. But it rarely teaches you where the edge is till you’re dangerously close to crossing it. Perhaps that is what this moment is. A signal.

A reminder that long-term sustainability is not built by uninterrupted pushing, but by knowing when to pause yourself on purpose.