The coast path is very good at exposing nonsense
There is a particular kind of optimism you can have at the start of a walk.
The weather is decent. Your legs feel fine. The first stretch is easy. You start moving quickly and think, yes, this is excellent, I am clearly an athlete now.
Then Cornwall inserts a cove.
Down you go.
Then up again.
Then another one.
The South West Coast Path has a very effective way of reminding you that progress is not measured by how energetic you looked for the first twenty minutes.
Work is much the same.
I spend a lot of time around projects where the default response to pressure is to go faster. Longer day. More tabs open. More tools. More messages. More things happening at once.
It feels productive because there is movement everywhere.
It can also be a spectacular way to get absolutely nothing finished.
I like the coast because it interrupts me
Being near the sea matters to me, but not in an "at one with nature" way. I would recoil slightly if I wrote that.
It is simpler than that.
If I have been sitting inside for too long, working on the same problem, walking near the coast breaks the loop. The wind is loud. The ground is uneven. The sea is doing something completely unrelated to whatever problem has been annoying me for the previous six hours.
That is useful.
It changes the scale of things.
And walking a coastal path makes a point that work culture often manages to forget: you cannot treat every section as a sprint.
Some bits require effort. Some require care. Some require stopping and looking at where you are.
Carry less
The easiest comparison is the weight you choose to carry.
Take too much on a long walk and you feel every unnecessary item eventually.
Projects work like that too.
An extra platform here.
Another subscription there.
Three communication channels.
Two project managers.
An automation tool talking to another automation tool that exists mainly because the first automation tool cannot talk to the thing you actually wanted it to talk to.
Before long, you have built an administrative exoskeleton around a fairly simple business.
I like tools. I use a lot of technology. The distinction is whether the tool removes friction or becomes a new category of friction that now requires maintenance.
If I can run something reliably with fewer moving parts, I generally would.
Not because minimalism is spiritually pure.
Because broken things waste time.
Work in legs, not one enormous journey
A large project becomes much easier once you stop carrying the whole thing around in your head.
There is a destination, yes.
But there is also the next leg.
What needs to be true by the end of this week?
What is the next decision?
What is actually blocked?
What can be finished and put on the shelf?
I am naturally drawn to the discovery part of projects. I like the bit where I do not quite know what I am doing yet and have to work it out.
Once I understand the problem, something slightly inconvenient happens: the interesting mystery has gone and the remaining work still needs doing.
That is where structure becomes useful.
Not because I enjoy pretending everything is an agile ceremony.
Because finishing requires a different kind of energy from discovering.
Breaking work into stages gives each bit an end.
And endings are pleasing.
Look at the ground occasionally
There is another fairly literal lesson in coastal walking.
If you spend the entire time staring dramatically at the horizon, you will eventually trip over something immediately in front of you.
Founders do this all the time.
Where will the business be in three years?
Should I hire?
Should I raise money?
Should I launch in America?
Should I build an app?
Perhaps.
But what is broken today?
Which client needs an answer?
Which feature is actually next?
Which invoice has not been sent?
What is the one thing preventing the current project from moving forward?
Long-term direction matters. I am not arguing for aimlessness.
I am arguing against using the horizon as an excuse not to deal with the next five yards.
Rest is part of the route
This is the part that hustle culture finds exceptionally displeasing.
Stopping can be productive.
Not indefinitely. Not as a lifestyle brand. But deliberately.
If you have spent hours trying to solve a problem and the quality of your thinking is going down, another three hours may not be commitment. It may simply be bad arithmetic.
Walk away.
Sleep.
Go outside.
Come back when your brain is capable of doing the job again.
I have had enough occasions where the thing that felt impossible at midnight became obvious the following morning to take that seriously.
Sustainable does not mean slow
There is a risk with all of this that "sustainable working" turns into another soft-focus productivity philosophy where everybody has a nice notebook and apparently no deadlines.
That is not what I mean.
Sometimes the job needs a sprint.
Sometimes something breaks and you have to stay with it.
Sometimes there is a deadline and the sensible response is simply to get on with it.
But a sprint is useful precisely because it is not your permanent walking pace.
If every week is an emergency, the problem is probably not your resilience.
It is the system.
Get to the next headland
You do not need to conquer the whole coastline before lunch.
You need to know where you are going, carry what you actually need, pay attention to the ground and keep moving.
Then stop occasionally and look at the view.
Otherwise there was not much point moving to Cornwall in the first place.