It was a super cold morning at the end of October 2025 & I was sat in my car outside the house for around 20 minutes before I went back in after going to do a food shop. Not because I didn’t want to go in… but because I couldn't move.
I had been away from work for just over a month on paternity leave but was still checking in and taking some calls, and so I had a sales call in fifteen minutes, two proposals overdue, a team Slack full of questions I hadn't answered, and twin daughters at home who'd been up since 4am. My mum passed away six weeks prior, and I was running on coffee and denial.
I walked into that sales call, smiled, nailed the pitch & closed the deal. And then I went to the bathroom and sat on the floor for ten minutes staring at nothing.
This is what high performance looks like when nobody's watching.
We've built an entire culture around "pushing through." The founder who “grinds”. The operator who “never breaks”. The leader who's “always on”. And for years, I was that person & wore that along with the 80-hour weeks like a badge.
I built and sold a multi-million pound eCommerce agency, worked with over 250 retailers globally, scaled teams, navigated an exit & built systems that run without me.
And then, in the space of a month in September 2025, I lost my mum, who will always be my best friend, after a really short & sudden cancer battle and became a father to twin daughters who were subsequently diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis.
Performance looks different when the stakes are that real.
Here's what I've learned and it took all of that to learn it:
Pretending you're fine is the most expensive thing you can do. It costs you clarity, it costs you the ability to make good decisions. And eventually, it costs you the thing you're trying so hard to protect.
The week I stopped pretending, I cancelled two meetings, told my business partner I needed to take time off until Christmas and went for a walk. No podcast. No phone. Just walking… (with the girls, obviously lol).
When I came back after Christmas, I wrote my entire plan of action for what we need to achieve at NOVOS within a couple of hours. Something I'd been stuck on for months before I went away.
The block wasn't strategy, it was exhaustion wearing a strategy mask.
The takeaway:
If you're performing well but feel like you're holding it together with tape, you probably are. And the fix isn't another productivity system, it's stopping long enough to hear what's actually wrong. The answer is usually simpler than you think.. and it’s scarier.
I'm not writing this because I've figured it out. I'm writing it because I haven't, and I think most of us are in the same boat, just not saying it.
That's what EFFORIA is. Not a solution. A conversation. An honest diary into what it actually takes to operate at your best when life doesn't slow down for you, and essentially a beefed-out version of my journal & notes I write every day now.
One issue a week. Every Wednesday. Built from real experience, not theory.
Welcome to the first one.
See you next week.
— Antonio