Freedom is a calendar with gaps in it

Everyone talks about freedom as if it were a place.

A beach. A laptop. A photo with good light.

I think it's much more boring than that. I think it's a calendar with gaps in it.

The full calendar as a trophy

There's a kind of pride in a full calendar. Every slot taken. Meetings back to back. Look how needed I am.

I've felt that pride. I suspect most founders have.

But a full calendar has a problem. It has no room for anything you didn't plan. And in a small company, most of what matters is unplanned. A server that misbehaves. A client who needs an answer today. An idea that only shows up when you stop for a minute.

If every hour is already sold, those things don't get time. They get squeezed in at night. And decisions made at that hour are rarely the good ones.

Freedom isn't doing whatever you want. It's having room for what you didn't see coming.

Why I didn't want investors, in calendar form

I've always said I prefer patient money. Money from clients, not from investors. A funding round doesn't buy you time, it sets you a clock.

That sounds like a principle. In practice, it's a calendar.

A company that has to grow fast fills every gap. It has to. Someone's waiting for the numbers. Every free afternoon is an afternoon that could have been sold.

A company that grows slowly can keep some gaps. That's the whole price of going slow: less money, fewer people, more patience. And in exchange, an afternoon now and then that nobody has claimed.

I used to think of those afternoons as waste. Now I think they're what I was actually buying when I said no to growing at any cost.

Gaps don't happen by themselves

Here's the trap. Gaps don't stay empty. If you don't protect them, something fills them. Usually something small and reasonable. A favour. A quick call. A "just this once".

This year Yeray and I have been closing some of those doors. Fewer exceptions, clearer rules about what's included and what isn't. Each one looks minor. Together, they're the difference between a calendar you own and one that owns you.

I'm not good at this yet. My first instinct when I see a gap is still to fill it. But I'm learning to read a gap differently. Not as time I'm wasting. As time I've earned.

That's freedom before size in its least glamorous form. A big company has a full calendar almost by definition. A small one gets to choose.

Everyone talks about freedom as if it were a place.

For me it's Tuesday afternoon with nothing booked. Which, I admit, looks a lot worse on Instagram.

P.S. If you want to meet, I'm free. Just not every afternoon. That's the point.