<story><title>Managing mental health while running a startup</title><url>https://future.a16z.com/managing-your-mental-health-while-running-a-startup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>asim</author><text>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&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;re eating like crap again.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;The diet, exercise, holidays and whatever else only go so far. Talking to other founders only goes so far. They&amp;#x27;re also struggling but it&amp;#x27;s hard to make time for each other. We&amp;#x27;re all busy just staying afloat. What we don&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;The reality is it&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;re even thinking of starting a startup.&lt;p&gt;My last point here. Routines and habits don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t use them as a dumping ground. So seeking external guidance at a certain point is a must.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>javajosh</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; While [diet, exercise, meditation, taking time off, etc] all have their place, at a certain point and a certain level of stress you stop being able to do it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It certainly can feel like that, but it is not true. You are able to do it. The key is to recognize that you are overwhelmed, you no longer have control over your attention, and your first priority is to stop and recover that control.&lt;p&gt;If you operate without control over your attention, you will start making mistakes at higher frequency, and mistakes cause more mistakes, which cause more stress, in a cascade of mistakes. The brain is caught in a cycle of helpless reaction. It requires discipline to step away and regain your focus because every fiber of your being tells you &amp;quot;everything is important right now&amp;quot;. This false belief is the root of much suffering.&lt;p&gt;The feeling of being overwhelmed is characterized by two things: a lack of clarity (a big picture where specific steps are unclear and who&amp;#x27;s relative importance is unclear), and a lack of focus (constantly thinking of the other steps when you&amp;#x27;re executing one). You are like a chef trying to do their job with a dull knife because they don&amp;#x27;t feel they have the time to sharpen it. This forces the chef to improvise ad hoc techniques to succeed with what is effectively a new, worse tool with which they have no practice. Improvisation is laudable and useful, but it&amp;#x27;s also stressful, high-risk.&lt;p&gt;Never accept that you are too stressed to deal with your stress - that&amp;#x27;s just the stress talking. :)</text></comment>
<story><title>Managing mental health while running a startup</title><url>https://future.a16z.com/managing-your-mental-health-while-running-a-startup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>asim</author><text>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&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;re eating like crap again.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;The diet, exercise, holidays and whatever else only go so far. Talking to other founders only goes so far. They&amp;#x27;re also struggling but it&amp;#x27;s hard to make time for each other. We&amp;#x27;re all busy just staying afloat. What we don&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;The reality is it&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;re even thinking of starting a startup.&lt;p&gt;My last point here. Routines and habits don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t use them as a dumping ground. So seeking external guidance at a certain point is a must.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simonswords82</author><text>Good post but there are a couple of points I don&amp;#x27;t completely agree with:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The people starting companies already have to be a bit delusional.&lt;p&gt;I do agree with this point!&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; you have to be ultra privileged to be in a place that you&amp;#x27;re even thinking of starting a startup.&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily. I started my businesses in a shed in my parent&amp;#x27;s garden and got in to £20k of credit card debt. That&amp;#x27;s not really privilege, I put everything I (didn&amp;#x27;t have) on the line!&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Your investors are not going to be helpful here, neither are your friends, family or other founders.&lt;p&gt;I actually think other founders who are level or ahead of you in their startup are fantastically useful&lt;p&gt;Edit: Listening to the comments below about how I don&amp;#x27;t recognise my privilege - I totally get it - of course I do understand that relative to somebody who did not have a garden shed or a credit card to get in to debt with I was privileged. I&amp;#x27;m not a total idiot nor am I ignorant that this is a form of privilege. It&amp;#x27;s just not Mum and Dad gave me a trust fund with £500k in it to go set something up - it&amp;#x27;s all relative and I appreciate my version of privilege was sufficient that I could take the first steps. Something that others won&amp;#x27;t enjoy, hence I am objectively privileged.</text></comment>