The Barista I Barely Know Told Me I Was Aging Fast - That's When I Knew I'd Lost Control

The barista I see twice a week but never really talk to stopped me during a coffee run to tell me he's noticed I was ageing rapidly.

That's when I realised someone I barely know could see what I was denying - that I am rapidly increasing my biological age to do work just for the same fixed salary.

The Warning Signs Were Everywhere (I Just Kept My Eyes Closed)

The other week, after back-to-back meetings and multitasking all morning, I finally made a run for coffee. When I picked it up and said thanks, he stopped me. Genuinely looked concerned and asked if I was okay. He said he'd noticed I am ageing fast - the grey hair, the exhaustion in my face.

I'd never really spoken to him beyond ordering and thanking him. The fact he felt a need to say something was a wakeup call.

On the walk back, it hit me: I'm doing the exact thing I constantly work to stop my teams from doing. Taking on unsustainable expectations. Giving up my health to meet them.

The week before, I'd been to the doctor. I rarely go - it's been years. However, this time, I happened to go right after a frustrating call with a project manager I was working with. So I was riled up about 30 min prior.

The doctor took my blood pressure four times because he couldn't believe how high it was.

I brushed it off. Thought it was just that one moment. No big deal.

Then the barista comment landed a week later, and suddenly everything connected: two bad infections in recent months, significantly worse sleep quality, rapidly thinning and greying hair, my wife mentioning I've been snoring more, waking up & talking multiple times a night along with sporadic dreams.

Smaller things individually. But they'd compounded.

When someone well outside your inner circle can see you're struggling before you acknowledge it yourself, you've already crossed a line.

The Protocol That Proved The Connection

I booked another doctor's appointment. This time, I ran an experiment.

The day before the second visit, I deliberately took the afternoon and evening easier. Finished work at 4:30pm, cooked dinner, activity time with my family, quick gym session. No late side projects. No more work after my wife & daughter went to bed.

I slept 7.5 hours, I'd been running on 6 to 6.5 hours for weeks prior.

In the morning, I didn't drink coffee immediately. I waited 45 minutes. Drank a bottle of water with hydrolite. Took the morning slower. Got my daughter ready and to daycare without rushing.

At work, I deliberately avoided emotionally intense tasks, minimal conflicts, no frustrating problems. I focused on creative problem-solving instead. Things that were challenging but not draining for me.

I hydrated. Ate breakfast at a reasonable time. Then in the waiting room, I focused on calming my breathing.

The result? Blood pressure back to fit, healthy athletic levels.

Same body. Different inputs.

The changes weren't overly complicated:

• Exercise the day prior
• Sleep 7.5+ hours (not 6-6.5)
• Delayed coffee by 45 minutes after waking
• Slower, calmer morning routine
• Hydrate and eat breakfast at reasonable times
• Avoided interpersonally stressful work in the early AM
• Deliberate breathing when you notice tension building
• Treat physical activity as non-negotiable

That's it. But knowing the protocol and maintaining it are two different problems.

The Real Problem Isn't Just The Workload - It's The Belief That Only You Can Do It

Since a recent org restructure, I've been carrying three roles: my old role, my previous manager's role, and the new role I'm moving into, coordinating the whole marketing and digital tech stack implementation.

Things come up that feel urgent. If I don't act fast, a full workstream often gets blocked. It often feels like I'm a core dependency for various activities and now a catch all for everything gone rogue.

I've started asking myself two questions:

1. Is the sky actually falling?
2. Does everyone who wants my input actually need it before making a decision?

Most of the time, no.

I'm investing more time into helping people coming in to take over my prior role. I've been building a personal AI Marcus assistant for various reasons but also so the team can ask more conceptual questions and get recommendations aligned to what I'd suggest, without needing me every time.

Plus, I'm working to enable people to make more decisions themselves. This means accepting that some things will move slower because I'm not in the midst of everything.

That was the expensive version of the lesson.

What Maintenance Actually Looks Like (And Why It's Still Hard)

I'm now trying to get seven hours minimum. I've incorporated both sports (Tennis) and gym (Functional & Strength), fixed time plus sporadic windows, so I have two opportunities to exercise more frequently instead of one.

But the challenge remains: things at work still come up that feel like they can't wait.

The habit part isn't the issue anymore. I can work with that.

It's the pressure from expectations, or at least what needs to be done. I don't like seeing things fall through. And when you're carrying the workload of what should be three roles because the restructure hasn't fully landed yet, something always feels urgent.

The ongoing maintenance isn't perfect. It's a mixed bag.

But I've realised the sky isn't actually falling most of the time. And the things that genuinely can't wait are fewer than I thought. In fact, generally I will get a follow up teams message if it's truly needed.

Have I Figured This Out? Fuck No. Not Even Close.

I'm gonna be real here... I'm still in the middle of this. I haven't come out the other side with a clean system and a tidy morning routine and a perfectly managed inbox. I'm still carrying three roles. The restructure still hasn't fully landed. The Email and Teams messages still pile up around the clock.

The difference now isn't that I've fixed it. It's that I can see the trade-off clearly when I'm making it. That's not the same thing as always making the right call or finding a way to do everything.

Some weeks I nail the protocol. Some weeks a project blows up on a Tuesday morning and the calm start goes out the window before I've finished my coffee. Some weeks the sleep slips back to 6 hours because shit's genuinely hit the fan, or I just didn't protect it well enough. All of which do happen on occasion.

What I've noticed is that knowing what you're trading doesn't automatically stop you from trading it. Protecting your morning routine is easy when nothing's on fire. When you're a dependency for three workstreams and someone's been waiting since yesterday, the first thing you think to sacrifice is the hour that was keeping you functional.

I'm writing this not from a place of having solved it, but because I almost didn't write it at all - because it didn't feel resolved enough. And I think that's exactly why it's worth saying out loud. The version of this story where someone cracks the code and maintains it perfectly isn't real. And when that's the only version being told, it makes everyone else feel like they're a piece of shit and the only one still getting it wrong.

We are learning as we go. There's often a lot happening all at once. You can't just drop everything, and anyone telling you otherwise probably isn't carrying what you're carrying.

What I can do is keep asking the right questions, keep enabling others around me. Keep noticing. Keep adjusting. And try not to wait for the barista to say something again.

The Only Math That Matters

You have one body.

If you're not healthy, you can't show up for anyone else, not your team, not your family, not the work you actually care about.

This isn't the oxygen mask principle as motivation. It's functional math.

When my blood pressure spiked, I wasn't more productive. I was just present. Reactive. Putting out fires instead of building anything meaningful.

When I slept 7.5 hours, hydrated, delayed coffee, and took a calmer morning, my blood pressure normalised. Same day. Same body. Different inputs. This allows far better clarity & creative thinking.

The lesson isn't "work less." It's "stop believing only you can do the work."

Delegate. Enable others to decide. Build systems so people don't need you or anyone else for every answer. Prioritise ruthlessly. (I love the agile principle "Maximise the amount of work not done".)

Because the alternative isn't sustainable work. It's visible decline that even the barista notices.

What You Can Do Today

If you're running on 5-6 hours of sleep, back-to-back meetings, and constant urgency, here's the diagnostic that's helped me:

1. Sleep test: Track your actual sleep for three nights. If it's under 7 hours consistently, that's the first lever.
2. Morning audit: What's the first stressful thing you do after waking? Can you delay it by 40 minutes?
3. Decision delegation: List the last 10 things people asked you to decide. How many could they have decided themselves with a framework or example?

You don't need to fix everything at once. But you do need to acknowledge when someone outside your inner circle can see you're struggling before you admit it to yourself... That's the line.

If you've been carrying multiple roles and feel like everything's urgent - what's one decision you're making this week that someone else could actually make if you gave them the framework and trusted them to own it?