Find Your Surfing

The one hour that makes every other hour better

It’s 6:10am on a dark, cold foggy morning in San Francisco. You jump out of bed, brush your teeth, grab a protein shake, throw your surfboard and wetsuit into the car, and head 20 minutes south to Pacifica.

It’s painful getting up this early. Every time you do it, you wonder why you’re doing it. You’re exhausted because you were up until midnight last night prepping for a board meeting today and didn’t fall asleep until after 1am. Because something deep inside of you knows you need it, you set the alarm for 6:10am.

As you open your car door in the Pacifica surf lot, you’re welcomed by a gust of 45 degree wind. Luckily it’s 55 in the water. It’s going to feel warmer in there! The only downside to a daily surf session is that the wetsuit doesn’t dry overnight, so you’re pulling on a damp suit in a cold, dark parking lot. Worth it. You grab your board and run into the ocean. The minute the water hits you and you feel the power of the ocean, it’s obvious why you woke up. You couldn’t think of anywhere else you’d rather be.

The waves are big today, so you paddle as hard and fast as possible. The presence you feel in this moment is something you rarely glimpse in startup life. After two minutes of aggressively paddling, you’re on the other side of the waves, and you sit up on your board to breathe in deeply. How awesome it is to be in the water, how beautiful it is to be surfing in Pacifica, and how good it feels to be doing something for yourself. You see a wave forming on the horizon, turn, paddle north a little, turn in, paddle harder, and pop up. As you’re carving the wave, you’re so focused you can only be in this moment, fully present. Awesomeness!

That’s what it feels like to find your surfing.

The grind

Startups are grinding all the time. For yourself, for the team, for investors, for customers. All grinding.

The minute you wake up, you grab your phone to check your texts and Slack. You immediately start responding, and you’re in it. There’s no moment in the morning to pause and take a breath. Shit needs to get done and you need to do it, now. Right before bed, same thing. Before turning off the light you check Slack, check texts, make sure everything is okay. Every day, all day. And it’s even more intense these days because your AI agents never sleep. You’re constantly in it and rarely take a break.

The first few years at Curated were exactly that. I’d be on the phone discussing an issue with someone on the East Coast the minute I got in my car. Then a lot of whiteboarding at the office or debating topics in meetings. Lunch was always at my desk. I don’t think there was one day at Curated, or frankly for most of my career, where I didn’t eat lunch at my desk or in a meeting. More meetings, lots of decisions all afternoon. Probably dinner at the office followed by phone calls the whole ride home. A short break to shower, then back on the phone with a co-founder or another leader until 10. Make sure we’re set for the next day. Then do it again. Every day.

You can do this for the first few years. I did, and we were super pumped about it because we were growing, we were successful, and it was working. But around year three I started to realize: oh shit, this is going to be a much longer journey than any of us anticipated.

The realization

The pandemic is when I figured it out. Mid-summer 2020, I moved to LA and started surfing with a close friend every single day. Being locked inside, on our computers all day with no exercise wasn’t sustainable. We could feel it in our bodies.

Every day for the next two years, I surfed early in the morning or at sunset. It was awesome.

I didn’t realize how powerful surfing was for me until one day I missed a few surf sessions and experienced the contrast. After two years in LA, I started traveling back and forth to San Francisco three days a week, and occasionally there was a day I couldn’t surf. When I wasn’t “selfish” for an hour and forgot to invest in myself.

And my team could tell.

That board meeting at 10am, the one I dragged myself out of bed for at 6:10? I walked in glowing, and one of my co-founders asked why. I told him: I woke up early, got an amazing surf session in and had time to reset.

Instead of showing up burned-out and exhausted, I showed up like an entrepreneur who was winning, who was crushing it, who was ready to go way more innings to keep building. That energy is infectious. The board felt it and, most of all, the team felt it.

The days I surfed, I was relaxed, more grounded and made better decisions. I listened better and let people develop their arguments instead of jumping in. The pattern recognition, the strategy, the ability to motivate the team and be the example. All of it was sharper. This was surfing Peter.

I also remember the other version. Six years in, the company was under a ton of pressure to keep growing, because it never stops. I walked into a meeting with a team that had been busting their asses for six months. They were making good progress, just not the progress I knew we needed in the context of the whole company. And I ripped them up. Calm, but super intense.

I’m not proud of that. They needed to hear the message, but there was a version of surfing Peter who would have landed it with more finesse and more kindness. Because I hadn’t been investing in myself that day, maybe that week, I was short and not at my best. The team had no idea what pressure I was carrying. It wasn’t their problem, but it showed up projected at them anyway.

It’s not about surfing

We need to fill up our own cup first, so we can be our best selves for the team and company. I know it sounds cliche, but very few people do it so I’m encouraging you to change that. I’m not saying take vacation all the time or the four hour work week, we all know that doesn’t exist in the startup world.

What I am saying is carve out time for yourself every day, offline. This isn’t scrolling. This isn’t sitting in front of Netflix. This is doing something for yourself that fills you up, gives you energy, and grounds you into being as present as possible.

For some people that’s a walk. For some that’s yoga. For others it’s a boxing class, pilates, MMA, running, or lifting heavy weights at the gym. For you it might be crocheting, or reading a fantasy novel. For those of us who are handy, it’s tinkering on your car or building something physical with your hands. It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that it’s completely offline and fully present so you’re feeding your soul. Even taking the dog for a walk counts. But not with headphones on while listening to a podcast about startup life:) That presence is what calms you and gives you the energy to be the best leader, the best decision maker, and the best example you can be for your company over the long term.

Start with 15 to 30 minutes a day. As you build a team, carve out an hour. And on weekends, expand it to be more. It compounds.

This is how culture builds

The most rewarding thing about this went beyond me. You will start to notice a difference in yourself, but more importantly you will start to notice a difference in your team.

When your team sees you investing in yourself, and sees the difference it makes in you as a leader, culture starts to get built around it. They start to realize they need to be doing this too, and it’s your example that gives them permission to. That’s how culture actually gets made. Not the values on the wall, the example at the top giving everyone else permission to do the thing they already know they should be doing.

One thing to keep in mind about the grind: 996 works for a period of time, but at some point the organization either burns out and collapses, or shifts into a higher gear of sustainability. Be the example. Shift into that higher gear, a little at first, as you have time. Then make it consistent once you have the scale and stability to do it.

Find your surfing.

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