Bryan JohnsonFounder of Blueprint and Don't Die

My life as an entrepreneur has been fighting fires. Now, I am fighting the blazes of my mind

19 Apr 2023 · 1 min

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In this personal anecdote, Bryan Johnson recounts a family boat outing in Wisconsin with his three young children when a critical Braintree server outage forced him to abandon the moment and spend an hour and a half on the lake troubleshooting the issue. He describes how the emergency call pulled him away from fishing with his kids, illustrating his lifelong pattern of being glued to his phone and reacting to crises. The story serves as a springboard for reflecting on the mental toll of constant connectivity, the difficulty of being present, and the desire to step back from perpetual emergency management as an entrepreneur.

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This is one of the first times in my life where I will go on a trip and just be present. I remember this time when the kids were young, something like maybe 8, 6 and 2, and we were in Wisconsin, and I decided to get them on a boat. And just when I got everything together, I hooked up. They all had their lines in the water, and I got a phone call Braintree and our servers were down and our customers couldn't process credit card payments. And when that happens, that's bad. And so I spent the next, I don't know, an hour and a half on the phone on the lake with my kids trying to fish, working with my team to try to call customers, address the issue and get the server back up and going. My entire life as an entrepreneur, it feels like I've always been glued to my phone, waiting for an emergency phone call or something.