From Burnout to Breakthrough: How to Keep Pushing Yourself at a Startup ??

Starting a company takes years of grueling hard work, and even then, success is never guaranteed.? The early days are often lonely and filled with existential challenges.? But what sets successful entrepreneurs apart is their ability to push themselves beyond their current limits, day in and day out, despite discomfort and uncertainty.

One common trait you’ll find among successful entrepreneurs is being a relentless hard worker.? This takes energy, but most importantly, personal motivation. Where does it come from?? In the last article, we talked about the idea of regularly facing existential challenges week in and week out at a startup.? There are so many moments where you could give up.? How do you constantly stay motivated to push yourself when there are so many moments that will make you want to quit or even just slowly burn out?

When you work for someone else (especially at a larger company), you are collecting your paycheck, and any work you do that is above and beyond is typically making someone else more money and contributing to their success. Sure, you want promotions and to look good in front of your peers, but you work hard on behalf of someone else.? That’s how it works.? And because of that, you see things in the media and news about quiet quitting.? How people hate their jobs, their boss, their coworkers, and aren’t passionate about what they do.? I get it.? It can be hard to generate personal motivation when your KPI is what your boss wants you to do each week. But you’ll do it to keep your job, and you’ll keep doing it until you leave for a new job or retire.

But at a startup, you can doubt yourself, you doubt your decisions, or even doubt your company.? That can be an incredible motivation killer.? When your boss tears you down, it can be frustrating and disappointing, but there is nothing that cuts deeper than when you personally tear yourself down. There’s nowhere to hide.

When the fate of your company, anyone that works for you, and (if you’re lucky to get them) your customers falls into your lap, it comes with tremendous pressure. It comes with a lot of stress that never really pauses and that can be exhausting.? It feels like it never ends.? You can’t take PTO to decompress to come back to work the following week refreshed.? You often don’t even get the weekends to do this either.? And if you’ve ever started a company, you know that if you did that, everything could come crashing down within days.

So how do you constantly stay motivated to push yourself when there are so many moments that will make you want to quit or even just slowly burn you out?? No human is a robot, even if sometimes it seems like it.? How do you not only keep the flame lit, but get it to grow brighter and brighter every week?

Let’s explore some strategies you can use to push through the fear, uncertainty, and doubt and find motivation every day at a startup, drawing on insights from this article by Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2012/07/how-hard-are-you-willing-to-pu).??

1. Embrace the Grind

No startup is an overnight success (as much as the movies like The Social Network look like it).? Even if you have a product that initially goes viral, the initial buzz almost always wears off, and the grind settles in. The early days are often all alone by yourself, or if you’re lucky enough, with other co-founders as well.? It takes brilliant people many years to mature a business.? Even at Facebook, which blew up at Harvard, it took a genius growth strategy conquering different colleges and communities while battling competition and fighting to build the social network.? It's important to embrace the grind and understand that success takes time.??

P.S. I highly recommend spending some time researching the true founding stories of successful tech companies today.? It is mind boggling to hear what happened in the many years leading up to success.? Books are the best way for this, but there are plenty of channels to hear these stories.

2. Personal Motivation is Key

One of the greatest motivators when starting your own company is the fact that everything you do is working for yourself.? This has to work for you if you’re going to start a company.? This is not the case when you work for someone else.? Personal motivation comes from a deep desire to create something of value and build a business that can change the world. This motivation is what keeps successful entrepreneurs going, even when times are tough.

3. Minimize Temptations and Timebox

Distractions are the worst enemy of productivity.? Whether it's scrolling social media or getting off topic with coworkers in the middle of the day, distractions quickly sap motivation and lead to burnout.? It's so important to have strategies to minimize temptations and focus on the task at hand when needed.? I get distracted, just like any other human being, but when I really need to get something done, I’ll timebox my task and not think about anything else until that time is over.??

My focus hack is that I love timeboxing late at night.? I’m naturally a night owl and often the hours after midnight are without distractions.? It’s easier for me to sit for a few hours and focus on whatever it is I’m working on when there’s nothing else to grab my attention.? Some of my most productive sessions have come between the hours of 12am to 4am.

P.S. If you’re a morning person, then the early hours of morning are also fair game here.

4. Push Yourself to Discomfort

I’m going to make an exercise analogy.? To achieve true excellence, you must be willing to endure discomfort and sacrifice instant gratification. This means pushing yourself beyond your current limits, day in and day out. This can be done in short bursts of high-intensity work, offset by rest and recovery.? Interval training is a great example of this, and it can be applied to any area of your work.? As you continually train your various “work” muscles, you will find you can go longer periods of time focused, you’ll develop good focusing habits, and you’ll in general be able to go for longer hours each day and each week.??

The linked HBR article calls them “Energy rituals.”? Energy rituals are specific behaviors done at precise times to help you overcome difficult challenges. For example, try beginning the day by focusing without interruption on the most important challenge in front of you for no more than 90 minutes, and then take a real renewal break. This will help you tolerate discomfort in short doses and build momentum over time.

It’s important to remember that this doesn’t mean immediately start working 100 hours per week and never stop.? That’s impossible.? You need to build up your endurance.

5. Exercise and Timebox Hobbies/Social Time

This is basically combining points 3 and 4, but in addition to timeboxing your work, make sure to timebox your personal time to do things you enjoy.? As you build up your tolerance, you need to spend time taking breaks.? Plot these out on your calendar at the start of the week.? They will give you things to look forward to.? They are almost like short term rewards to help split up your week.? Then by also timeboxing them, it allows you to make sure they don’t squeeze into your productivity hours.

I have a co-ed soccer league I play in every Wednesday night with my friends.? I go to the gym every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.? I leave one night of Friday or Saturday to do something fun.? Come up with your own ways to unwind.

As you build this, I highlight exercise as something you MUST include in your non-work timeboxing.? It’s so important.? Not only does exercise force you to do something other than work, it’s so incredibly important to do good things for your body.? You will find it much easier to focus if you regularly exercise each week.? Your health is number 1.

6. Stay Healthy.? Health Comes First

That leads to my last point.? Health comes first.? If you aren’t healthy, you won’t be able to work hard.? It’s something you don’t fully appreciate until you are sick and you cannot work.? If your body is not close to 100%, you will not be able to work hard every week.? Exercise, eat well, and sleep well.? Do these 3 things and you should be set.? I never sacrifice on my sleep, but I know for some people, this is an easy place for people to try to come up with more hours.? Don’t do that.? My bad habits lie with eating well.? Personally, it’s really easy for me to forget about meals or just delay a meal till I’m done with a task.? To combat this, I make large protein packed smoothies every morning to drink throughout the day to ensure I’m getting my calories.? My personal recipe includes strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, bananas, spinach, greek yogurt, peanut butter, oat milk, and orange juice.? Tastes great and is incredibly calorie dense, especially if you pack the greek yogurt and peanut butter.??

I tried Soylent before.? I know it works for some people.? It made me feel sick.? I implore you to give it a try.? If it works for you, it’s a super easy way to replace a meal when needed.

In conclusion, finding motivation every day at a startup requires a relentless focus on personal motivation, minimizing distractions, pushing yourself to discomfort, and building good habits.? Hopefully with some of these strategies, you can achieve true excellence and build a business that can change the world.

#markit #startups #success #fail #hardword #challenges #tech #journey #working #entrepreneurship #founders #networking