It’s been over a month since I published a piece of content on the internet…

What happened? Where did I go?

The short answer: I had a baby 👶

The long answer: I’ve been pausing to reflect on how I can better live in alignment with what feels right (right now).

Let me explain… 

Something I’ve been learning from the book Bringing up Bebe (highly recommend for any new parents out there) is the power of The Pause.

The Pause is when you take a moment before you go check on your sleeping baby who started crying. If you always immediately get your baby without pausing, they never learn to comfort themselves and fall back asleep. And you won’t get good sleep since your kid is up crying.

Similarly, I’m taking a pause on different areas of my life:

• I’m simplifying my finances (to mostly cash & index funds plus selling all my real estate)

• Reducing (not stopping) my day-to-day involvement with AppSumo

• Pausing most of my social media content creation

• And pausing all interviews for 2024

If you never take a pause it’s easy to keep doing the things that aren’t serving you anymore.

My life today is…

1. Wake up early to help my wife take care of the baby

2. Take a Spanish class from Baselang for 1 hour

3. Grill some food

4. Spend 2 hours studying fantasy football & chess

5. And then go cycling

That’s my entire day… and it’s satisfying.

This pause isn’t forever. But for now, my focus is on figuring out what feels right for my next phase of life.

So many people work towards something and when they get there, they just keep on working. It’s like finishing a marathon and immediately starting another one without pausing to recharge, celebrate, and think about what you really want next.

(A great book on this is Awareness by Anthony Demello. H/t Tim Ferriss).

As I reflect on my life in decades, it creates beautiful buckets of how life changes:

• My 20s (hustle) were all about just doing anything and everything to get rich. I felt like I was always lacking something. 
• My 30s (stable) were accepting parts of life I liked, doubling down on what’s working and staying consistent.
• My 40s (simplify) are simplifying the distractions, and focusing on the few things that matter. 
• My 50s (enjoy) - if I had to guess it would just be accepting myself, embracing who I am fully with much less apologies or shame around them. Might do this in my 40s! :) 

Success varies depending on where you’re at in life. What you want can (and frankly should) change.

If I’m honest, I’ve had to drag myself to record a small clip for our latest YouTube video. And the idea of interviewing more people just to have more content is not appealing.

I feel guilty because I often preach (and truly believe) that success comes through consistency. But at some point, we need to get off the hamster wheel, and reflect which wheel we want to be running on.

If you spend so much time getting rich but never enjoy being rich - are you even rich?

And let me be clear:

“Rich” doesn’t just mean having lots of money. It means living the life YOU want.

Sometimes I’ve created YouTube videos cause I think there’s something lacking in me and the only answer is by asking these super-wealthy people. But the real answer is to get clear about how I want to live, create work that I enjoy, and live that life. Actually living my life in alignment is the best way to inspire others on how to live.

When I get up at 3 am to check the NFL Fantasy Football waiver wire…That’s me living my life. Even though no one external cares, and there’s barely any money on the line –I LOVE getting to do it. It’s an amazing game that I can play endlessly. That is the ideal work. A game you love to keep playing.

So how am I running Appsumo while taking a pause? I'm still involved, but have made a few changes:

1. Removing Slack. Trust the team you’ve hired to run the business.

2. Monthly Business Review (MBR). Get monthly business reports discussing how the company is doing against the budget.

3. 1-Pager Company Strategy. Clarify the outcomes and empower your team to make the best choices to get there.

4. Hiring badass people. Shoutout to Ilona Abramova, Seann Stubbs, Anna Notario, Chad Boyda, and other leaders helping run AppSumo. 

As a content creator - the external validation of being seen and worthy is addicting. It’s easy to chase more views, more followers, more fame. But recently I’ve been reflecting on how I can be content with just myself. What if no one knew what I was doing, would I still be happy?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting attention or enjoying the game of making popular content. That’s why it’s a pause and not forever.

As ambitious, driven, and motivated people it’s hard to escape the feeling of guilt that things “should” be a certain way. But it’s that exact internal conflict that creates the uneasy tension that doesn’t feel right.

If you fully listened to yourself what would your life look like?

Excited for you,

Noah “Le Pause” Kagan