Stefan Verkerk

A few hours ago, my son burst into my room screaming bloody murder. It was 5 AM, and I was deep in a dream. It felt like someone had poured a bucket of ice water over my head. But this was no ALS challenge — I didn’t opt-in — this was just life. There was zero logic to his waking me: he was sleepwalking and talking in circles. He’d woken me up for absolutely no reason, and now I was up for good. On just five hours of sleep, my eyes felt like they’d been rubbed with sandpaper and stuffed with cotton balls. I swore and grumbled in a stupor, convinced my day was ruined, as I started to make coffee. As the smell of brewing coffee filled the air, I lazily peered out the window of our lake house, where we’d been vacationing for the past few days. The beach below glittered in the morning light, dotted with remnants of yesterday’s fun—half-buried water guns, forgotten sandcastles, and deflated pool floaties. Despite my exhaustion, a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. The memories of the previous day flooded back. I thought about how we’d spent the entire afternoon laughing and swimming. My older son’s face lit up with excitement as he tried tubing for the first time, his joyful screams ringing out across the water. The boys and their two visiting friends ran around in a pack, like characters from Lord of the Flies, their skin bronzed by the sun. At one point, the four of them yelled in unison that this was ‘THE BEST DAY EVER’ (their highest form of praise), their tiny voices reverberating across the lake. That evening, after dinner, I read them a book as they dozed off, cuddled up against me. Later, when Zoe and I debriefed, we both agreed with their declaration: it had been a pretty special day. Now, in this moment, as I stood there in the kitchen, shivering in my boxers, AeroPress mid-press, caught between the discomfort of the present and the joy of yesterday, I saw a lesson. All my life, I’ve been trying to avoid stress at all costs. To build a comfortable cocoon around myself. To embrace laziness. This has made me good at business. After all, whenever I encounter something I don’t enjoy or I’m not good at, I immediately seek to delegate it to somebody else. Over the years, I’ve taken this to such an extreme that I’ve handed over the operations of every single one of my companies to CEOs and executives. I dubbed this strategy “Lazy Leadership” and I wrote a popular big post about it many years ago (medium.com/flow/lazy-leaders…). Back then, I foolishly believed that delegating tasks would eliminate stress. That if I had the right strategy, life would be a twenty-four seven cakewalk. An idea that now, after many years of trial and error, I’ve disabused myself of. My business partner Chris has a saying I like: “Stress is like water: it will find its way to you.” No matter how much you delegate or plan, anything worth doing will inevitably add stress to your life. Whether it's starting a new business, learning a skill, or having kids—all these pursuits come with their share of discomfort. It’s like going on a hiking trip. You can plan. You can pack all the right gear. But if you want to experience it properly, you will have to grind up some miserable hills, eat mediocre camp food, and sprain the odd ankle. With kids, you can read all the books, follow best practices, and even hire a great nanny, but ultimately — unless you want to neglect your kids — you will have many shitty nights of sleep. It will be stressful. I promise. Before I had kids, I asked a friend if he’d recommend it. He said: “Your life will be objectively worse. Like, way worse. But subjectively so much better.” This is true of so many things outside of kids. The dance between pain and joy. Neither existing without the other. Years ago, I saw a therapist because I was feeling listless, like I wasn’t progressing in life. He summarized the problem eloquently: “If you pay somebody else to mow your lawn, you can’t have a cold beer with your friends afterwards to celebrate a hard day’s work.” I realized I was avoiding pain to my own detriment, neglecting the hard things that would ultimately make me happy. He invoked a Joseph Campbell quote: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” In the present moment, I realized that the early wake-up, though irritating, was a reminder of this lesson. I was now in the cave, and the treasure was wonderful.