10 ms·

Managing mental health while running a startup

207 points by sebg 5y ago

ipnon 5y ago
Burnout seems to be the most common mental health issue at startups. The gradual presentation makes it difficult to prevent. You feel like you are pushing the limit, but that you can handle it. Then you have a couple weeks of crunch where you start to fall behind, and this snowballs the deterioration of your mental health and productivity at the same time. It is much cheaper to treat by taking a weeks long vacation when the pressure is reaching the limit than dealing with the months long fallout of pushing the engine until it breaks.
randomsearch 5y ago
By far the most important advice here is exercise. Years ago I had a friend who suffered from severe anxiety, to the point where she later took a job working for an anxiety charity to help others. I had some anxiety and followed all her advice for coping with it, got some counselling (really helped), read all the leaflets. Took up swimming. Meditated every day. Recently, after some reading, I tried a different exercise routine for a few weeks, where I worked out every day before work. Compared to all the other stuff I’d done, hitting the gym every day was _dramatically_ more effective for coping with stress and anxiety. I can’t really emphasise this enough. Like, not 2x or 3x as effective, but just off the charts. It felt physically impossible to get severely stressed if I hit the gym every morning.
- Melting_Harps 5y ago
  > By far the most important advice here is exercise. It's definitely a major part, I always paid for my 24 hour fitness membership during my days as a founder for this reason, I suffered immensely when things shutdown during COVID--even as a non-founder by that point because most of my coping mechanisms required a massive workout when I'm stressed out. I started to grind my teeth badly and had constant headaches, and was always irritable during this time. Nothing really beats a hard work out and a long sauna and steam with occasional exposure to the snow outside and some CBD and a massage (even with just a gun) for your body into resetting itself for the next day. Especially if you were all alone at the gym like I was at 2am and had the place to yourself and the 1 guy on staff. The only problem was I hardly slept back then and only power napped, which resulted in occasionally falling asleep in the spa area embarrassingly, which I'm now finding impossible to do without massive set backs. I'd argue diet is perhaps just as, if nor moreso, important, though. And sleep rounding the last of the top 3.
- elSidCampeador 5y ago
  my experience is very similar - regular exercise made a world of difference for me (I do yoga)
  - shafyy 5y ago
    I've started doing Yoga ~ 3 years ago, and along with switching to a plant-based diet, it's one of the best habits I picked up. I've tried all kinds of sports before, but could never make it stick because I didn't enjoy doing it (e.g., for me running, going to the gym or doing weight lifting at home is extremely boring).
- danenania 5y ago
  Another great thing about exercise is it tends to improve sleep a lot, which also has a major effect on stress levels and happiness. I started realizing that when I feel down and discouraged, often the cause is simply being tired and not sleeping enough. I’d drink more coffee/caffeine to compensate, making me sleep even worse. It’s a bad cycle. But a sufficiently tough workout cancels out the over-caffeination and makes it easy to fall asleep at night.
  - sz4kerto 5y ago
    > Another great thing about exercise is it tends to improve sleep a lot Depends. For example, picking up a new sport (new type of movement/activity) can disrupt your sleep for weeks or months and it represents lots of extra stress. I've been doing quite lot of running for around two years (never had more than two days rest between runs), and then picked up BJJ. Then I got injured and had to stop exercising for a few weeks. I have not slept that well for years -- finally I had nights without muscle pain and tiredness :) So be careful with _too hard_ exercise if you're stressed out; it raises dopamine levels but doesn't negate stress.
    - navbaker 5y ago
      It sounds like it wasn't the exercise itself that was sabotaging you, your comment about muscle pain makes it sound like you weren't allowing for proper recovery time between workouts. That's just as important as the actual workout.
    - vl 5y ago
      >finally I had nights without muscle pain and tiredness This is well-researched problem. All it means you don't have diet balanced enough to provide everything necessary for proper recovery. For me it was magnesium deficiency, now I take magnesium every night and sleep just fine even after muscle-intense exercise. Before this "miracle" (<= joke) OTC supplement I had tense muscles and crumps and wasn't getting good sleep. (Magnesium comes in many forms, it takes time to find one which is not disturbing for the stomach, I use magnesium glycenate in capsules).
- comprev 5y ago
  This is precisely the reason I cycle 1000KMs each year - a combination of time alone, fresh air and exercise (either high or low impact) really helps offset life's worries.
  - Jgrubb 5y ago
    The single best productivity tool I’ve bought in years was an old Fuji road bike last summer. I’ve been a runner for many years but something about the bike makes it easier to get into a meditative, creative space that’s less available to me when jogging.
  - nowherebeen 5y ago
    I bought a hybrid bike last year and became a weekend warrior. I do around 50-100k every Saturday. I am thinking of buying a carbon road bike, but they can get quite expensive.
    - comprev 5y ago
      Like any hobby it can be as expensive or cheap as you like. My road bike (Cannondale CAAD8 from 2010) is probably worth €200-250, yet gets ridden 10x more than other bikes in the house costing upwards of €7k.
    - MezzoDelCammin 5y ago
      not sure exactly which "hybrid", but my personal recommendation would be to look for gravel bikes. These days there's quite a choice of frames / materials / groupset options and they're as close to a jack-of-all-trades as it gets. Depending on some basic components / extras (tyres, racks, aerobars, bags) they can do almost any reasonable terrain. They're always "slightly worse" than the dedicated road/MTBs, but excel when You'd like to mix things up (e.g. your hilly tracks need some 20km of road to get to from where you live and putting a bike in a car simply feels silly).
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  I have fatigue so cant do much but a short walk or some squats or similar is a boost!
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    I keep on being seriously relieved that I've not developed fatigue. I have MS, and fatigue is a really common symptom. People don't get how much it can upset life, nor how little sleep helps with it. Heck, I don't really understand, but nevertheless, I tried to come up with a plan to deal with it. Realistically, that means being happy I don't deal with it right now and deciding there wasn't much I could do now to make it easier later.
- artdigital 5y ago
  On the other hand, my gym habit is so regular that going in the morning for an hour is ingrained into my day. I am still very stressed, sometimes even at the gym while working out, thinking about all the things i have to do later
thewizardofaus 5y ago
Some of my tips: 1) Meditation is great. Do more meditation 2) You will have super productive days and you will have super unproductive days. That's okay. Don't sweat it, they will even out. Long term progress is what you want
- afarrell 5y ago
  People say consistency is key. But humans naturally have variability, especially under conditions of high uncertainty such as founding a startup. So practice the courage to trust yourself today even if yesterday was unproductive.
- herodoturtle 5y ago
  Reminds me of a quote that’s helped me a lot over the years (founded a startup, had several mega stressful periods, company going strong 16 years later): “It doesn’t matter how slowly you go so long as you don’t stop.”
  - emoII 5y ago
    "Even an unstoppable force can move 1mph"
    - leaflets2 5y ago
      What if someone out-competes you? Maybe cannot happen in some areas, eg there's "always" room for one more consultancy agency? (Assuming they find talented people)
yawnxyz 5y ago
as someone who's run marathons... building a startup is NOT a marathon. Marathons have a distinct finish line. When you're at mile 20 and your legs are falling off and you take tylenol or whatever they give you to make the pain go away... or when ppl on the sidelines say "almost there!!" and you send them a rude look because those last six miles are the WORST... at least you know you'll cross the finish line at some point and pass out on the grass. No, startups are like running marathons but in Stephen King's the Long Walk. There's no finish line — you just have to walk farther than those around you, or you die trying.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Why are startups like this and not 40h/week affairs? I mean if you do 80h/week that is only 2x. Does that 2x make all the difference? If startups are getting millions of dollars in seed funding these days do you need founders burning themselves out? For bootstrappers can it just be done more slowly over more runway rather than long hours?
  - mdm12 5y ago
    Not to mention the second batch of 40 hours will likely be nowhere as productive as the first 40 hours.
    - julianlam 5y ago
      Depending on what article you read, anything past hours 4-6 a day are essentially a wash. Knowing that it makes sense to front-load tour day and spend the rest doing less intensive tasks: answering emails, updating documentation, etc.
  - linkdd 5y ago
    It's not 80h/week vs 40h/week, it's how many weeks can you endure it. It's how far you go, not how fast you go.
    - nmdeadhead 5y ago
asim 5y ago
A lot of people advocate for self help through diet, exercise, meditation, taking time off, etc. While these all have their place, at a certain point and a certain level of stress you stop being able to do it. You end up cutting short during a workout because your brain won't switch off. The lack of sleep starts to affect all your cognitive function and then the diet starts to slip and before you know it you're eating like crap again. At the best of times these routines of habit are just an escape from the stress or covering the actual problems related to not just running companies as a founder but actual all roles in life that require your ultimate sacrifice of mind, body and soul. The diet, exercise, holidays and whatever else only go so far. Talking to other founders only goes so far. They're also struggling but it's hard to make time for each other. We're all busy just staying afloat. What we don't really talk about is the fact that you are more than your startup, that your life and identity is more. Part of that means other experiences or trauma earlier in your life could be magnified by the stresses of running a startup. The people starting companies already have to be a bit delusional. The reality is it's excruciatingly hard and yet also still a first world problem because you have to be ultra privileged to be in a place that you're even thinking of starting a startup. My last point here. Routines and habits don't always help. There has to be more. To ensure the stress and sacrifice are manageable at that level it can often also help to seek external council from a CEO coach, a therapist, etc. Your investors are not going to be helpful here, neither are your friends, family or other founders. You have obligations to all of them and you can't use them as a dumping ground. So seeking external guidance at a certain point is a must.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >Routines and habits don't always help. I would argue that if you're putting yourself under so much long-term stress that you can't maintain healthy habits at all, you're basically guaranteed to go insane and fail.
  - ekanes 5y ago
    No, you’re guaranteed to suffer. All of the biggest companies start this way. I’m not saying this is great for you, or even that it’s required to do big things, but to say you’ll fail isn’t true. This suffering is a function of your startup’s rate of growth.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
To the founders on here: which item would have helped the most reduce the stress 1. more (or more secure) money. If you got your house paid for and a decent salary guaranteed for two years while you got the thing started, would that have helped? 2. A wingman - someone you trusted utterly with you each step of the way (but harder to provide than the above) 3. Other I ask because if I was a VC and my stable of startups could improve their hit rate with say, 1) then it seems a no brainer. I am just wondering if the VC game is rigged to be like a hazing - we cannot find any other decent way to sort the winners
- chaircher 5y ago
  I think having some sort of regular wage hit my bank account over 24 months instead of 2 years of savings would have made a lot of pyschological difference. Not seeing a number go down like a timer takes the pressure off.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  For me it's 2. Changing the relationship with my wife so that we're both on the same team has done absolute wonders. Financials have never, and probably will never be an issue, yet I still managed to drive my mental health into a ditch.
mizzao 5y ago
I don't agree with everything Jeff Bezos says, but the idea of "work-life integration" really hits the mark. A startup as a "marathon, not a sprint" really means it's a founder's job to keep themselves in top mental, physical, and emotional shape, just like a world-class athlete. No one told me this when I embarked on the startup journey, so I had to learn it the hard way.
- shrewdcomputer 5y ago
  I've discovered later than I should that for me, I need at least a two week break from time to time. I need actual holiday where I don't answer emails or even do what I used to consider the minimum required. From an outside perspective, that's always been obvious to me and I've always understood that people need it, I just never applied it to myself. Inadvertently holiday time is often when my best ideas come.
  - the_common_man 5y ago
    > Inadvertently holiday time is often when my best ideas come. So you are still thinking about work? My best ideas come during work. During vacation, I don't think of anything work related but mostly philosophizing.
Blackstone4 5y ago
A lot easier to manage your own mental health as a VC than founder…
trippsydrippsy 5y ago
lbriner 5y ago
I think the best advice is not to take people's advice! Everyone's life, stress tolerance, maturity, health, wisdom etc. is very different. Also, the companies are different: OKTA has a very specific market with a relatively well-known product-market fit. Other businesses don't know their product market fit. Having a family is a big commitment and changes everything related to priorities so comparing the family "man" with the singleton is not correct. The most important thing imho is about how you are able to deal with failure and your expectations for mistakes. The experienced founder is not necessarily wiser than you, they have probably just learned that things don't always work out. Once you accept that you will need to work, let's say, 80 hours per week average to make a startup happen but at the same time, it might not work, you might have to fire people, you might let down shareholders, you will need to have hard conversations with your close family; if you can handle that without feeling too much regret then you might be OK. The rest of us end up having to cope with the fact that we don't deal with failure well and take things too personally ;-)
- leaflets2 5y ago
  > the best advice is not to take people's advice! I'm not going to follow this advice!
- the_common_man 5y ago
  > I think the best advice is not to take people's advice! How about best advice is not to take other people's money?
mihaic 5y ago
I'll add something that as a founder is actionable and I haven't seen recommended: work with as few people as possible and if possible with people over 30. A large amount of stress is amplified by mini-dramas that could have been avoided entirely by people with more life experience and fewer human cogs in your processes usually means less mess to cleanup, allowing you to focus more on what's important.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Solid advice that; especially in a crazy startup situation, having many people will probably drive you insane. I had all kinds of startups over the decades; from 100s of people to me alone; the best ones were 2 people setups until significant seed (>$1m). Those were the most successful and the least stressful (during the first phase); of course once it grows it is different but at least you are prepared. And yeah, the older I get, the more I appreciate older people; I prefer no-nonsense 35+.
- yaseer 5y ago
  Strongly agree with this. A lot of founders make the mistake of prematurely scaling, and I've done that in the past. Scaling from a handful of people, to more than a dozen creates a significant jump in stress, and dilutes focus, for a non-commensurate jump in productivity. Any pre-PMF startup should be as small as humanly possible.
- duxup 5y ago
  I remember after I got older I eventually had some cubes next to mine that were perpetual "new college student hires" cubes. I was / am by no means the best at my job technically, in fact some of those new guys were better out of the gate technically than I was in some ways. But I could get along with the new guys and enjoyed working with them. Over lunches and small talk I would quietly have discussions about "how to pick your battles" / "yeah that's absurd but here's an easy way to get around it rather than fight it" and more generally "amazingly easy things you can do to make your boss happy that cost you nothing at all". These lessons of course weren't me just telling them what to do, just planting ideas that they eventually would discover, hopefully sooner rather than later. They were basically all the things I learned the hard way ;)
sklargh 5y ago
Sample of one disclaimer. - I avoid Caffeine after noon. - This improves whatever sleep I am able to get. - I take a 30 minute walk every day, midday and avoid using any devices during it.
DEDLINE 5y ago
I'm about 2 years into building a business. The craziest paradigm was definitely going from having a huge salary, winning awards and accolades with regularity and having status in a community to having no salary, nobody pats you on the back and being viewed as "another startup guy". You've really got to be okay with being alone with yourself and you have to have abnormal levels of self-assurance to make it out alive. When the dark thoughts come for me, I get high and go running / yoga. If I didn't have this outlet, I probably would have spun out into a negative, obsessive abyss and bowed out long ago.
- leaflets2 5y ago
  What does getting high mean in this context? One additional thing I've noticed is that if you build technology, and it takes a while until it's ready enough so you can start making money -- then, your friends and acquaintances will eventually think that what you're doing is utterly silly and that you don't understand this, but that they do.
ryanSrich 5y ago
My mental health is always tied directly to how well my startup is doing well. I’ve tried, but my mental health cannot be controlled simply by exercise, diet, etc. It’s just 100% tied to how well my startup is performing, and that usually means how much revenue it’s generating relative to where the company should be given burn, number of employees, etc. I understand that’s not the case for everyone, but my piece of advice would be to do everything in your power to make your company successful. For me, that’s the exact same thing as working on my mental health.
- CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
  Interesting to see where different peoples values lie. Living life like this sounds absolutely miserable to me, no matter how much money I would bring in. But hey I understand that some people enjoy the hustle.
- julianlam 5y ago
  That's precisely the issue TFA is referring to. Tying your mental health to your work. It's unhealthy, and if you're at the point where you're justifying this link, you might seriously be in a co-dependent relationship with your company. If you have the mental fortitude to know when to step back, then all the power to you, but I find it much too easy to fall into the trap of "working so hard so my mental health doesn't suffer, but my mental health suffers anyway"
- sjg007 5y ago
  That's a dangerous place to live mentally. You are not your job or your startup. And if it fails that doesn't mean you are a failure.
solofounder89 5y ago
I exercise, meditate, eat mostly healthy during the week, sleep 8 hrs, and no caffeine in afternoons on most days. My mental health is still not great. I couldn't imagine where it would be if I didn't do these things. I've recently started therapy and I can definitely say it's starting to help. As a founder, I'm simply burnt out of having to make so many important decisions. One of the most helpful things about therapy for me is being able to vent unfiltered and letting go of the responsibility to decide what is going on with me and what to do next about it. Very freeing to be vulnerable and not have to be the one on top making the final decisions for a moment.
- jeffrwells 5y ago
  Totally agree on the ability to vent or show weakness. Your therapist is the only person you know with no agenda
gumby 5y ago
> For example, when I travel for sales meetings, I regularly invite prospects, customers, and investors to come to a game with me Personally, I would hate to receive such an invitation. Of course I could politely turn it down, and if it comes from a vendor, it's easy to do so. But for a partner or such, ugh.
TimPC 5y ago
I'm not sure managing mental health while running a start-up is a topic we want VC blogs to be the experts on. VCs are a substantial part of the problem here with their decisions to use a power imbalance to get founders to take little to no salary for as long as possible to extend the runway of the company. A lot of pressure on founders is financial as their personal finances are often a mess even as their company is taking off. Many VCs have a long history of making this problem worse. Data shows that founders over 50 are the most successful age group yet VCs continue to focus on 20 somethings because few founders over 50 are able to handle the financial terms the VCs want on things like founder salary. I'm convinced we lose a lot of potentially good start-ups by requiring founders to take vows of poverty. We need a coherent approach to mental health for founders. We need a coherent approach to mental health for early start-up employees. VCs are part of the problem and accepting their recommended solutions will make things worse not better.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  Not all startups need VC. Found one of those.
  - bspear 5y ago
    More people need to understand this. Most businesses are not designed for VC pace and scale. But they can be excellent cash-flow and profitable businesses
- rkk3 5y ago
  > VCs are a substantial part of the problem here with their decisions to use a power imbalance to get founders to take little to no salary for as long as possible to extend the runway of the company. This might be true with some Accelerators or Angel Investors not VCs. When A16z or other VC's write a 10mm dollar check they don't pressure their founders to have poverty line wages... if anything they try to get the founders to go buy a Ferrari they can't afford.
  - daniel-cussen 5y ago
    I would say both, well not buy a Ferrari get a lease for a Ferrari, with a killer monthly payment, he's on the hook with twenty signatures, debt, then...ramen. Live in the Ferrari. So everyone sees him and says wow VC money he got funding but when he visits Sand Hill Road he's eyeing the sugar packets in the coffee thing.
mmcclure 5y ago
> Let me give you an example. I love ice hockey and play late every Tuesday evening and early most Sunday mornings as part of a Bay Area league. It’s something I’ve done the whole time I’ve been building Okta. Getting on the ice is my way of clearing my head and blowing off steam. For a couple of hours, I get to leave my stress and responsibilities behind. This paragraph made me go look up a picture of Kerrest, because I've probably said pieces of this verbatim to others. I play hockey on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in (two) Bay Area leagues. Sunday morning is, at least the one I'm thinking of, over 40 so I'm not eligible. When we were going through YC, my co-founders and I all moved to an Airbnb further down the peninsula. At least once a week, with rare exceptions, I packed my equipment into my car and drove back to SF or Oakland to play. That time on the ice, and even in the locker room with my teammates, was such an incredibly important time for me as a mental break/reset. As the company's grown, and my role has increasingly become people-focused vs programming, that time away (COMPLETELY away) from any sort of communication tools has become so deeply precious to me. Totally unrelated, he doesn't look immediately familiar to me, I wonder what league he plays in!
Comevius 5y ago
There is a difference between a side project, a company focusing on serving a corner of the market sustainably and a startup focusing on venture capital and growth. The later will be mentally taxing, more so if you are inexperienced. A side project on the other hand is a breeze as you aren't putting everything on the line. The entire culture surrounding a16z is a mental health hazard. The soulless obsession with hypergrowth, having to resort to exploitation to make it. The same goes for China and their inhumane hustle culture. Your soul in exchange for opportunities. With a16z the only opportunity though is eventually selling your company to Google or Facebook.
markdjacobsen 5y ago
This is a good post, and I'm always glad to see discussions about mental health anywhere in the startup scene. However, I agree with the other commenters who note that healthy routines may not be enough to cope with the stresses of running a startup, particularly given the high rate of failure. Even the strongest and healthiest individuals face a high risk of being strained past a breaking point. I wish we talked more about that. I learned this the hard way, presiding over the failure of a nonprofit I founded. Nothing prepared me for the sheer level of stress and exhaustion, the aftermath, and the recovery process. I wrote a book about this to help others, in case anyone is going through something similar: "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal." [0] [0] www.markdjacobsen.com/eating-glass/

207 points by sebg 5y ago

Burnout seems to be the most common mental health issue at startups. The gradual presentation makes it difficult to prevent. You feel like you are pushing the limit, but that you can handle it. Then you have a couple weeks of crunch where you start to fall behind, and this snowballs the deterioration of your mental health and productivity at the same time. It is much cheaper to treat by taking a weeks long vacation when the pressure is reaching the limit than dealing with the months long fallout of pushing the engine until it breaks.

randomsearch 5y ago

By far the most important advice here is exercise. Years ago I had a friend who suffered from severe anxiety, to the point where she later took a job working for an anxiety charity to help others. I had some anxiety and followed all her advice for coping with it, got some counselling (really helped), read all the leaflets. Took up swimming. Meditated every day. Recently, after some reading, I tried a different exercise routine for a few weeks, where I worked out every day before work. Compared to all the other stuff I’d done, hitting the gym every day was _dramatically_ more effective for coping with stress and anxiety. I can’t really emphasise this enough. Like, not 2x or 3x as effective, but just off the charts. It felt physically impossible to get severely stressed if I hit the gym every morning.

Melting_Harps 5y ago
> By far the most important advice here is exercise. It's definitely a major part, I always paid for my 24 hour fitness membership during my days as a founder for this reason, I suffered immensely when things shutdown during COVID--even as a non-founder by that point because most of my coping mechanisms required a massive workout when I'm stressed out. I started to grind my teeth badly and had constant headaches, and was always irritable during this time. Nothing really beats a hard work out and a long sauna and steam with occasional exposure to the snow outside and some CBD and a massage (even with just a gun) for your body into resetting itself for the next day. Especially if you were all alone at the gym like I was at 2am and had the place to yourself and the 1 guy on staff. The only problem was I hardly slept back then and only power napped, which resulted in occasionally falling asleep in the spa area embarrassingly, which I'm now finding impossible to do without massive set backs. I'd argue diet is perhaps just as, if nor moreso, important, though. And sleep rounding the last of the top 3.
elSidCampeador 5y ago
my experience is very similar - regular exercise made a world of difference for me (I do yoga)
- shafyy 5y ago
  I've started doing Yoga ~ 3 years ago, and along with switching to a plant-based diet, it's one of the best habits I picked up. I've tried all kinds of sports before, but could never make it stick because I didn't enjoy doing it (e.g., for me running, going to the gym or doing weight lifting at home is extremely boring).
danenania 5y ago
Another great thing about exercise is it tends to improve sleep a lot, which also has a major effect on stress levels and happiness. I started realizing that when I feel down and discouraged, often the cause is simply being tired and not sleeping enough. I’d drink more coffee/caffeine to compensate, making me sleep even worse. It’s a bad cycle. But a sufficiently tough workout cancels out the over-caffeination and makes it easy to fall asleep at night.
- sz4kerto 5y ago
  > Another great thing about exercise is it tends to improve sleep a lot Depends. For example, picking up a new sport (new type of movement/activity) can disrupt your sleep for weeks or months and it represents lots of extra stress. I've been doing quite lot of running for around two years (never had more than two days rest between runs), and then picked up BJJ. Then I got injured and had to stop exercising for a few weeks. I have not slept that well for years -- finally I had nights without muscle pain and tiredness :) So be careful with _too hard_ exercise if you're stressed out; it raises dopamine levels but doesn't negate stress.
  - navbaker 5y ago
    It sounds like it wasn't the exercise itself that was sabotaging you, your comment about muscle pain makes it sound like you weren't allowing for proper recovery time between workouts. That's just as important as the actual workout.
  - vl 5y ago
    >finally I had nights without muscle pain and tiredness This is well-researched problem. All it means you don't have diet balanced enough to provide everything necessary for proper recovery. For me it was magnesium deficiency, now I take magnesium every night and sleep just fine even after muscle-intense exercise. Before this "miracle" (<= joke) OTC supplement I had tense muscles and crumps and wasn't getting good sleep. (Magnesium comes in many forms, it takes time to find one which is not disturbing for the stomach, I use magnesium glycenate in capsules).
comprev 5y ago
This is precisely the reason I cycle 1000KMs each year - a combination of time alone, fresh air and exercise (either high or low impact) really helps offset life's worries.
- Jgrubb 5y ago
  The single best productivity tool I’ve bought in years was an old Fuji road bike last summer. I’ve been a runner for many years but something about the bike makes it easier to get into a meditative, creative space that’s less available to me when jogging.
- nowherebeen 5y ago
  I bought a hybrid bike last year and became a weekend warrior. I do around 50-100k every Saturday. I am thinking of buying a carbon road bike, but they can get quite expensive.
  - comprev 5y ago
    Like any hobby it can be as expensive or cheap as you like. My road bike (Cannondale CAAD8 from 2010) is probably worth €200-250, yet gets ridden 10x more than other bikes in the house costing upwards of €7k.
  - MezzoDelCammin 5y ago
    not sure exactly which "hybrid", but my personal recommendation would be to look for gravel bikes. These days there's quite a choice of frames / materials / groupset options and they're as close to a jack-of-all-trades as it gets. Depending on some basic components / extras (tyres, racks, aerobars, bags) they can do almost any reasonable terrain. They're always "slightly worse" than the dedicated road/MTBs, but excel when You'd like to mix things up (e.g. your hilly tracks need some 20km of road to get to from where you live and putting a bike in a car simply feels silly).
quickthrower2 5y ago
I have fatigue so cant do much but a short walk or some squats or similar is a boost!
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  I keep on being seriously relieved that I've not developed fatigue. I have MS, and fatigue is a really common symptom. People don't get how much it can upset life, nor how little sleep helps with it. Heck, I don't really understand, but nevertheless, I tried to come up with a plan to deal with it. Realistically, that means being happy I don't deal with it right now and deciding there wasn't much I could do now to make it easier later.
artdigital 5y ago
On the other hand, my gym habit is so regular that going in the morning for an hour is ingrained into my day. I am still very stressed, sometimes even at the gym while working out, thinking about all the things i have to do later

thewizardofaus 5y ago

Some of my tips: 1) Meditation is great. Do more meditation 2) You will have super productive days and you will have super unproductive days. That's okay. Don't sweat it, they will even out. Long term progress is what you want

afarrell 5y ago
People say consistency is key. But humans naturally have variability, especially under conditions of high uncertainty such as founding a startup. So practice the courage to trust yourself today even if yesterday was unproductive.
herodoturtle 5y ago
Reminds me of a quote that’s helped me a lot over the years (founded a startup, had several mega stressful periods, company going strong 16 years later): “It doesn’t matter how slowly you go so long as you don’t stop.”
- emoII 5y ago
  "Even an unstoppable force can move 1mph"
  - leaflets2 5y ago
    What if someone out-competes you? Maybe cannot happen in some areas, eg there's "always" room for one more consultancy agency? (Assuming they find talented people)

yawnxyz 5y ago

as someone who's run marathons... building a startup is NOT a marathon. Marathons have a distinct finish line. When you're at mile 20 and your legs are falling off and you take tylenol or whatever they give you to make the pain go away... or when ppl on the sidelines say "almost there!!" and you send them a rude look because those last six miles are the WORST... at least you know you'll cross the finish line at some point and pass out on the grass. No, startups are like running marathons but in Stephen King's the Long Walk. There's no finish line — you just have to walk farther than those around you, or you die trying.

quickthrower2 5y ago
Why are startups like this and not 40h/week affairs? I mean if you do 80h/week that is only 2x. Does that 2x make all the difference? If startups are getting millions of dollars in seed funding these days do you need founders burning themselves out? For bootstrappers can it just be done more slowly over more runway rather than long hours?
- mdm12 5y ago
  Not to mention the second batch of 40 hours will likely be nowhere as productive as the first 40 hours.
  - julianlam 5y ago
    Depending on what article you read, anything past hours 4-6 a day are essentially a wash. Knowing that it makes sense to front-load tour day and spend the rest doing less intensive tasks: answering emails, updating documentation, etc.
- linkdd 5y ago
  It's not 80h/week vs 40h/week, it's how many weeks can you endure it. It's how far you go, not how fast you go.
  - nmdeadhead 5y ago

asim 5y ago

A lot of people advocate for self help through diet, exercise, meditation, taking time off, etc. While these all have their place, at a certain point and a certain level of stress you stop being able to do it. You end up cutting short during a workout because your brain won't switch off. The lack of sleep starts to affect all your cognitive function and then the diet starts to slip and before you know it you're eating like crap again. At the best of times these routines of habit are just an escape from the stress or covering the actual problems related to not just running companies as a founder but actual all roles in life that require your ultimate sacrifice of mind, body and soul. The diet, exercise, holidays and whatever else only go so far. Talking to other founders only goes so far. They're also struggling but it's hard to make time for each other. We're all busy just staying afloat. What we don't really talk about is the fact that you are more than your startup, that your life and identity is more. Part of that means other experiences or trauma earlier in your life could be magnified by the stresses of running a startup. The people starting companies already have to be a bit delusional. The reality is it's excruciatingly hard and yet also still a first world problem because you have to be ultra privileged to be in a place that you're even thinking of starting a startup. My last point here. Routines and habits don't always help. There has to be more. To ensure the stress and sacrifice are manageable at that level it can often also help to seek external council from a CEO coach, a therapist, etc. Your investors are not going to be helpful here, neither are your friends, family or other founders. You have obligations to all of them and you can't use them as a dumping ground. So seeking external guidance at a certain point is a must.

AussieWog93 5y ago
>Routines and habits don't always help. I would argue that if you're putting yourself under so much long-term stress that you can't maintain healthy habits at all, you're basically guaranteed to go insane and fail.
- ekanes 5y ago
  No, you’re guaranteed to suffer. All of the biggest companies start this way. I’m not saying this is great for you, or even that it’s required to do big things, but to say you’ll fail isn’t true. This suffering is a function of your startup’s rate of growth.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

To the founders on here: which item would have helped the most reduce the stress 1. more (or more secure) money. If you got your house paid for and a decent salary guaranteed for two years while you got the thing started, would that have helped? 2. A wingman - someone you trusted utterly with you each step of the way (but harder to provide than the above) 3. Other I ask because if I was a VC and my stable of startups could improve their hit rate with say, 1) then it seems a no brainer. I am just wondering if the VC game is rigged to be like a hazing - we cannot find any other decent way to sort the winners

chaircher 5y ago
I think having some sort of regular wage hit my bank account over 24 months instead of 2 years of savings would have made a lot of pyschological difference. Not seeing a number go down like a timer takes the pressure off.
AussieWog93 5y ago
For me it's 2. Changing the relationship with my wife so that we're both on the same team has done absolute wonders. Financials have never, and probably will never be an issue, yet I still managed to drive my mental health into a ditch.

mizzao 5y ago

I don't agree with everything Jeff Bezos says, but the idea of "work-life integration" really hits the mark. A startup as a "marathon, not a sprint" really means it's a founder's job to keep themselves in top mental, physical, and emotional shape, just like a world-class athlete. No one told me this when I embarked on the startup journey, so I had to learn it the hard way.

shrewdcomputer 5y ago
I've discovered later than I should that for me, I need at least a two week break from time to time. I need actual holiday where I don't answer emails or even do what I used to consider the minimum required. From an outside perspective, that's always been obvious to me and I've always understood that people need it, I just never applied it to myself. Inadvertently holiday time is often when my best ideas come.
- the_common_man 5y ago
  > Inadvertently holiday time is often when my best ideas come. So you are still thinking about work? My best ideas come during work. During vacation, I don't think of anything work related but mostly philosophizing.

Blackstone4 5y ago

A lot easier to manage your own mental health as a VC than founder…

trippsydrippsy 5y ago

lbriner 5y ago

I think the best advice is not to take people's advice! Everyone's life, stress tolerance, maturity, health, wisdom etc. is very different. Also, the companies are different: OKTA has a very specific market with a relatively well-known product-market fit. Other businesses don't know their product market fit. Having a family is a big commitment and changes everything related to priorities so comparing the family "man" with the singleton is not correct. The most important thing imho is about how you are able to deal with failure and your expectations for mistakes. The experienced founder is not necessarily wiser than you, they have probably just learned that things don't always work out. Once you accept that you will need to work, let's say, 80 hours per week average to make a startup happen but at the same time, it might not work, you might have to fire people, you might let down shareholders, you will need to have hard conversations with your close family; if you can handle that without feeling too much regret then you might be OK. The rest of us end up having to cope with the fact that we don't deal with failure well and take things too personally ;-)

leaflets2 5y ago
> the best advice is not to take people's advice! I'm not going to follow this advice!
the_common_man 5y ago
> I think the best advice is not to take people's advice! How about best advice is not to take other people's money?

mihaic 5y ago

I'll add something that as a founder is actionable and I haven't seen recommended: work with as few people as possible and if possible with people over 30. A large amount of stress is amplified by mini-dramas that could have been avoided entirely by people with more life experience and fewer human cogs in your processes usually means less mess to cleanup, allowing you to focus more on what's important.

tluyben2 5y ago
Solid advice that; especially in a crazy startup situation, having many people will probably drive you insane. I had all kinds of startups over the decades; from 100s of people to me alone; the best ones were 2 people setups until significant seed (>$1m). Those were the most successful and the least stressful (during the first phase); of course once it grows it is different but at least you are prepared. And yeah, the older I get, the more I appreciate older people; I prefer no-nonsense 35+.
yaseer 5y ago
Strongly agree with this. A lot of founders make the mistake of prematurely scaling, and I've done that in the past. Scaling from a handful of people, to more than a dozen creates a significant jump in stress, and dilutes focus, for a non-commensurate jump in productivity. Any pre-PMF startup should be as small as humanly possible.
duxup 5y ago
I remember after I got older I eventually had some cubes next to mine that were perpetual "new college student hires" cubes. I was / am by no means the best at my job technically, in fact some of those new guys were better out of the gate technically than I was in some ways. But I could get along with the new guys and enjoyed working with them. Over lunches and small talk I would quietly have discussions about "how to pick your battles" / "yeah that's absurd but here's an easy way to get around it rather than fight it" and more generally "amazingly easy things you can do to make your boss happy that cost you nothing at all". These lessons of course weren't me just telling them what to do, just planting ideas that they eventually would discover, hopefully sooner rather than later. They were basically all the things I learned the hard way ;)

sklargh 5y ago

Sample of one disclaimer. - I avoid Caffeine after noon. - This improves whatever sleep I am able to get. - I take a 30 minute walk every day, midday and avoid using any devices during it.

DEDLINE 5y ago

I'm about 2 years into building a business. The craziest paradigm was definitely going from having a huge salary, winning awards and accolades with regularity and having status in a community to having no salary, nobody pats you on the back and being viewed as "another startup guy". You've really got to be okay with being alone with yourself and you have to have abnormal levels of self-assurance to make it out alive. When the dark thoughts come for me, I get high and go running / yoga. If I didn't have this outlet, I probably would have spun out into a negative, obsessive abyss and bowed out long ago.

leaflets2 5y ago
What does getting high mean in this context? One additional thing I've noticed is that if you build technology, and it takes a while until it's ready enough so you can start making money -- then, your friends and acquaintances will eventually think that what you're doing is utterly silly and that you don't understand this, but that they do.

ryanSrich 5y ago

My mental health is always tied directly to how well my startup is doing well. I’ve tried, but my mental health cannot be controlled simply by exercise, diet, etc. It’s just 100% tied to how well my startup is performing, and that usually means how much revenue it’s generating relative to where the company should be given burn, number of employees, etc. I understand that’s not the case for everyone, but my piece of advice would be to do everything in your power to make your company successful. For me, that’s the exact same thing as working on my mental health.

CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
Interesting to see where different peoples values lie. Living life like this sounds absolutely miserable to me, no matter how much money I would bring in. But hey I understand that some people enjoy the hustle.
julianlam 5y ago
That's precisely the issue TFA is referring to. Tying your mental health to your work. It's unhealthy, and if you're at the point where you're justifying this link, you might seriously be in a co-dependent relationship with your company. If you have the mental fortitude to know when to step back, then all the power to you, but I find it much too easy to fall into the trap of "working so hard so my mental health doesn't suffer, but my mental health suffers anyway"
sjg007 5y ago
That's a dangerous place to live mentally. You are not your job or your startup. And if it fails that doesn't mean you are a failure.

solofounder89 5y ago

I exercise, meditate, eat mostly healthy during the week, sleep 8 hrs, and no caffeine in afternoons on most days. My mental health is still not great. I couldn't imagine where it would be if I didn't do these things. I've recently started therapy and I can definitely say it's starting to help. As a founder, I'm simply burnt out of having to make so many important decisions. One of the most helpful things about therapy for me is being able to vent unfiltered and letting go of the responsibility to decide what is going on with me and what to do next about it. Very freeing to be vulnerable and not have to be the one on top making the final decisions for a moment.

jeffrwells 5y ago
Totally agree on the ability to vent or show weakness. Your therapist is the only person you know with no agenda

gumby 5y ago

> For example, when I travel for sales meetings, I regularly invite prospects, customers, and investors to come to a game with me Personally, I would hate to receive such an invitation. Of course I could politely turn it down, and if it comes from a vendor, it's easy to do so. But for a partner or such, ugh.

TimPC 5y ago

I'm not sure managing mental health while running a start-up is a topic we want VC blogs to be the experts on. VCs are a substantial part of the problem here with their decisions to use a power imbalance to get founders to take little to no salary for as long as possible to extend the runway of the company. A lot of pressure on founders is financial as their personal finances are often a mess even as their company is taking off. Many VCs have a long history of making this problem worse. Data shows that founders over 50 are the most successful age group yet VCs continue to focus on 20 somethings because few founders over 50 are able to handle the financial terms the VCs want on things like founder salary. I'm convinced we lose a lot of potentially good start-ups by requiring founders to take vows of poverty. We need a coherent approach to mental health for founders. We need a coherent approach to mental health for early start-up employees. VCs are part of the problem and accepting their recommended solutions will make things worse not better.

brianwawok 5y ago
Not all startups need VC. Found one of those.
- bspear 5y ago
  More people need to understand this. Most businesses are not designed for VC pace and scale. But they can be excellent cash-flow and profitable businesses
rkk3 5y ago
> VCs are a substantial part of the problem here with their decisions to use a power imbalance to get founders to take little to no salary for as long as possible to extend the runway of the company. This might be true with some Accelerators or Angel Investors not VCs. When A16z or other VC's write a 10mm dollar check they don't pressure their founders to have poverty line wages... if anything they try to get the founders to go buy a Ferrari they can't afford.
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  I would say both, well not buy a Ferrari get a lease for a Ferrari, with a killer monthly payment, he's on the hook with twenty signatures, debt, then...ramen. Live in the Ferrari. So everyone sees him and says wow VC money he got funding but when he visits Sand Hill Road he's eyeing the sugar packets in the coffee thing.

mmcclure 5y ago

> Let me give you an example. I love ice hockey and play late every Tuesday evening and early most Sunday mornings as part of a Bay Area league. It’s something I’ve done the whole time I’ve been building Okta. Getting on the ice is my way of clearing my head and blowing off steam. For a couple of hours, I get to leave my stress and responsibilities behind. This paragraph made me go look up a picture of Kerrest, because I've probably said pieces of this verbatim to others. I play hockey on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in (two) Bay Area leagues. Sunday morning is, at least the one I'm thinking of, over 40 so I'm not eligible. When we were going through YC, my co-founders and I all moved to an Airbnb further down the peninsula. At least once a week, with rare exceptions, I packed my equipment into my car and drove back to SF or Oakland to play. That time on the ice, and even in the locker room with my teammates, was such an incredibly important time for me as a mental break/reset. As the company's grown, and my role has increasingly become people-focused vs programming, that time away (COMPLETELY away) from any sort of communication tools has become so deeply precious to me. Totally unrelated, he doesn't look immediately familiar to me, I wonder what league he plays in!

Comevius 5y ago

There is a difference between a side project, a company focusing on serving a corner of the market sustainably and a startup focusing on venture capital and growth. The later will be mentally taxing, more so if you are inexperienced. A side project on the other hand is a breeze as you aren't putting everything on the line. The entire culture surrounding a16z is a mental health hazard. The soulless obsession with hypergrowth, having to resort to exploitation to make it. The same goes for China and their inhumane hustle culture. Your soul in exchange for opportunities. With a16z the only opportunity though is eventually selling your company to Google or Facebook.

markdjacobsen 5y ago

This is a good post, and I'm always glad to see discussions about mental health anywhere in the startup scene. However, I agree with the other commenters who note that healthy routines may not be enough to cope with the stresses of running a startup, particularly given the high rate of failure. Even the strongest and healthiest individuals face a high risk of being strained past a breaking point. I wish we talked more about that. I learned this the hard way, presiding over the failure of a nonprofit I founded. Nothing prepared me for the sheer level of stress and exhaustion, the aftermath, and the recovery process. I wrote a book about this to help others, in case anyone is going through something similar: "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal." [0] [0] www.markdjacobsen.com/eating-glass/