Stayed late again tonight.

And caught myself thinking — what if I removed all of it? The automation, HubSpot, Salesforce, workflows, APIs, data requests, emails, calls, meetings, client visits…

What would I actually do?

I’d go for a bike ride along the river. I’d finally watch all the reels my son keeps sending me — they’ve been piling up for weeks. I’d do math with him. We’d watch anime together in the evening. I’d take my wife to that cozy little café in Delft. I’d walk along the beach in Zandvoort aan Zee on a weekend. I’d take a trip to Terschelling — where you can literally walk through crab droppings, and honestly, there’s something beautiful about that. I’d reread Herman Koch’s The Summer House with Swimming Pool, or better yet — discover someone completely new.

And then, I think, I’d get bored.

I’d open a browser tab. Pull up n8n. Type in some endpoint, connect to a system, pull some data — and just like that, I’d be off again.

Here’s the thing — I genuinely love this. I sometimes feel like one of those old-school detectives from Moonlighting — a little obsessed, a little ridiculous, but completely alive. Every era has its heroes. And this stuff genuinely energizes me.

So if I ever did walk away from automation — I’d come back to it anyway.

What about you?

Take away the Slack messages, the standups, the Zoom calls, the commute — what would you do with your time? And honestly… would you go back?