by Isaiah McPeak
Pinwheel Co-Founder
by Isaiah McPeak
Pinwheel Co-Founder
It was 9:30pm. I had just tucked my 11-year old daughter in bed – a moment I cherish, as I share custody with her Mom.
But afterwards I had quite a bit of anxiety to let out. Why? It had turned into round 192 of “why can’t I have a phone?”
I was really torn. I saw the benefits and had put in a ton of research. Deflated by my inability to choose a good solution in this case, I had a conversation with my fiancé, who works in child psychotherapy. This was where we got to that night:
No solution seemed viable.
A former-CEO-turned-investor that I barely knew said he had a new adventure and was looking for a product leader.
I was intrigued.
The conversation went something like this.
The rest is history.
Think I’m exaggerating? I’ll give you 5 examples.
Since joining this company, I have:
1. Learned how my own habits are crushing my cognitive capacity by reading the book Tech Generation (2018)
2. Discovered that the mere presence of a phone is making me dumber (see Brain Drain in the Journal of the Association of Consumer Research).
3. Taken my two daughters on a 50-hour road trip with no iPads at all and had a great time.
4. Radically changed tech habits in my home: we don’t check out with tech, we use it together (e.g. playing Minecraft in the same world).
5. Started turning my phone off for hours at a time (I did six the other day), experiencing the best workdays I’ve had in a long time.
My productivity and satisfaction with work are even higher, and everyone in my family (kids included) agrees these changes have improved our lives.
No matter what happens next, I’m grateful for these life changes. But my hope is that I can impact other families like mine. There is a way to foster healthy tech habits in kids and families that enrich and connect us -- that incorporate the good side of phones without draining our brains or pulling us apart. That’s why I’m now a part of Pinwheel. And I hope you’ll join us on this ride.
Isaiah McPeak is a Master Yoda of building and scaling teams, product management, brain science, communications, teaching, and coaching, with an Aristotelian rhetoric twist. He has started six organizations (and 2 bands!), designed and shipped multiple B2B and B2C products, successfully been part of four startups raising pre-seed funding and journeying to or through growth stage (5 money raises, $6M total), personally sold over $35M in services and software, and coached CEOs and keynote speakers. He is coauthor of Upside Down Debate: A Deeper Why to Persuasion and frequent tech speaker and trainer in Austin, TX. He paints, musics, sews, dances, adventures, and road trips with his wife (a future Brené Brown!) and two daughters, 11 and 7.