My Stroke Of Luck

At 9:15 IN THE MORNING ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 6th of this year, at the age of 43, I suffered a stroke. 

I was finishing up a proposal on my laptop at a local cafe when the letters started bouncing around the screen like the legendary video game, Arkanoid.

(Look it up. It's still phenomenal.)

Moments later, my CFO/wife and a colleague were stuffing me into my truck. They later told me I kept insisting, somewhat incomprehensibly, that I simply needed something to eat. 

(We’ll circle back to this in a moment.)

Luckily, there was a trauma center a few thousand feet away. We got a room quickly. Doctors, I learned, hardly make you wait at all when you’re having a stroke. 

I’ll fast forward past the two hours of horror where I could not name anything in my field of vision (light switch, vent, formica, sink, wife), let alone speak coherently. Whenever I tried to speak, the nursing staff winced and my wife began to cry. 

A vow of silence, I determined, was the best move. 

A pair of CT scans occurred.
A hospital that specializes in treating stroke victims sent an ambulance.

And then, all of a sudden . . . I was fine.
(Well, sort of.) 

With my stomach sucking up against my spine due to hunger at this point, I quietly dared to speak again. Whispering to my wife seated next to me, I said, “Pssst. I’m f****** starving.”

Startled as much by my speech as its clarity, she ran out of the room. She returned with a doctor, but no food. Two hours later, I was diagnosed with a transient ischemic attack. Also known as a TIA, it’s a stroke that’s in progress, yet resolves itself before causing permanent damage. 

The MD asked me about four categories: stress, diet, sleep, and exercise.  

I candidly shared some details about my life. 

This was his feedback:

Business owners and other corporate types are at a greater risk for stress-induced medical illnesses. Beginning an intermittent fasting regimen without research or planning simply because your brother mentioned it isn't very smart. Going to bed at 10:30 pm and waking up at 4:30 am to workout means you’re not prioritizing sleep—also not smart.

When I mentioned, somewhat belatedly, that I had also recently started shocking my system with 90 seconds of freezing cold water in the shower to start the day, he looked at me like I was an idiot. 

“Well, considering all that . . . what did you think was going to happen?”

The truth was this: nothing.

Then he said, “Let me make this absolutely clear: You are not invincible. Work less, sleep more. Quit fasting. Drink more water. And shower like a normal person.” 

“There is only one vessel per soul,” he said. “And this is not a dress rehearsal. Take care of yourself—literally.”  

Now, shame and guilt are not very helpful emotions, but they did help me identify a few insights after my stroke of luck.

1. Work-Life balance is B.S. 
When you work 50+ hours every week, by definition, you will not have balance. What you must choose to do is intentionally force the pendulum back towards rejuvenation after periods of exhaustion. 

2. There is never enough time—only tradeoffs. 
The book, Four Thousand Weeks—the average number of weeks a human lives—by Oliver Burkeman helped me reframe my time management philosophy. 

My daily questioning changed from, “How will I get all this stuff done?” to, “How will I most intelligently decide what won’t get done?”

3. My calendar carried no hints of risk.
If I was going to work myself to death, I at least wanted to have a system in place so my family could simply look at my calendar and say, “Aha! His work-to-die plan is right here.”    

On January 7th, I began searching for a better time management system. I ultimately constructed my own with a big idea from Cal Newport.

Use the password hartmann at this link to download my current time management system, The Weekly Game Plan. It’s proven to be 100x improvement for me. Your mileage may vary.

 4. It’s always Who, Not How.   
Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach, has a mantra: Who Not How. 

We almost always know how to get stuff done. 
The better question is who can help? 

The project that’s killing you?
It’s child’s play for someone else. 

Your job is to find that person.
For me, it was hiring an Executive Assistant. 

5. Quit trying to scale through complexity.
For the better part of the past decade, we’ve been growing our two businesses—Red Angle, Inc. and The Behind Your Back Sales Co. —with an ever-increasing amount of duplication. 

Two websites.
Two emails.
Two podcasts.
Two newsletters. 

With both companies focusing on the construction industry . . . why?

I was afraid. 

Things were going well.
I was afraid I'd screw it up if I changed it.

It’s hard for successful humans to imagine how much more successful they would have been had they chosen a different, simpler path. I bet you can relate. What's easier to imagine is how much better life can be when unnecessary complexity is removed from daily systems and processes.

When in doubt, choose the simpler path. 

That’s what we’re doing now. 

We are consolidating our two businesses into one, uncreatively named, Bradley Hartmann & Co.