It sounds like you are about to burn out. You need to take a holiday. And I'm quite serious - I burned out, and if I'd taken a holiday I suspect 3 years ago my life might have been quite a bit better than it is now.
Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
#22Meditate each morning and afternoon. That will help an immeasurable amount. Headspace is a good app for that but I prefer TM. Also, take a hit or two of weed then netflix and chill. The weed won't give you a hangover like booze does and you'll be super productive with energy the next morning after you meditate.
Re: Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
#23A lot of leaders in high stress situations, from Phil Jackson to Ray Dalio incorporate some form of mindfulness into their lives. It can even be going for a run, and really just focusing on that and nothing else for fifteen minutes.
Giving the executive areas of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) a rest is important. It can even be a few minutes in nature, a walk, etc. I prefer meditating, but it’s really just about calming your conscious mind for a bit, focusing on your breathing, being in the moment.
I’m reading “Incognito” right now. It’s about contemporary neuroscience. It’s amazing how much our unconscious mind plays a role in finding insight and making decisions. We have a tendency to want to consciously figure everything out. Sometimes letting go can be incredibly productive. Think hard about a problem, then let it go. Meditation can make it easier to do that.
Phil Knight, founder of Nike, said in his book, “Shoe Dog”, that “if all you’re seeing is problems, you’re not thinking clearly.”
Re: Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
#24How do you know that you are the only one feeling this way?
Re: Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
#25What helped me was to start saying no to a lot of things so that you can primarily focus on what matters. Put an ROI and place a dollar value on your time to help you make decisions about how you allocate it. A partner at a law firm might bill $1000/hour so that may be a good place to start. As the CEO you’re the pace car. You can’t expect people to work harder than you and that’s a challenge because you may be working with multiple teams, each one of them involved in a sprint at some point, but you don’t get that luxury. It’s tough but hopefully with some scale you can get more support on the things you’re less good at or don’t enjoy.
Re: Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
#26I wrote a Mini blog post about this a few years ago: http://daanlo.tumblr.com/post/53208271906/had-a-tough-year-5...
In General: what you are Feeling ist absolutely normal. It will get easier
Re: Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
#27Delegate and grow
Re: Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
#28I am not in that position, but I have a few friends that are. My advice would for you to hire a COO - I say hire instead of promoting because I am assuming that if there were someone with the skills for the job you would already have noticed and not be feeling that much pressure. A non-technical COO can be helpful to discuss the vision of the company and share the responsibility to execute it. A friend of mine is Co-…
" I say hire instead of promoting because I am assuming that if there were someone with the skills for the job you would already have noticed "
Whilst this could be true there also is the possibility for the OP that the business has grown rapidly and they are still trying to operate the same way as the early months, trying to be involved in too much and not delegating control and decisions.
My advice would be to have an honest conversation with the whole team, show the trust to be vulnerable and I'm sure if the team are great as you say people will find a way to pull together.
If these things don't work though as another poster mentioned, sell the business and protect your health. Best of luck!
Re: Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
#29I am not in that position, but I have a few friends that are. My advice would for you to hire a COO - I say hire instead of promoting because I am assuming that if there were someone with the skills for the job you would already have noticed and not be feeling that much pressure. A non-technical COO can be helpful to discuss the vision of the company and share the responsibility to execute it. A friend of mine is Co-…
" I say hire instead of promoting because I am assuming that if there were someone with the skills for the job you would already have noticed " Whilst this could be true there also is the possibility for the OP that the business has grown rapidly and they are still trying to operate the same way as the early months, trying to be involved in too much and not delegating control and decisions. My advice would be to have…
You are right, I jumped some steps. I wholeheartedly agree that the first step is to be transparent with the whole team and tell them the situation. Ideally with all the team, but if there is not so much trust with everyone, at least with the co-founders and all the most senior and team leaders employees.
Re: Ask HN: Successful tech startup but find every day emotionally challenging
#30I'm not in anywhere near as stressful a situation (just a team leader), but what can help is making sure that each thing that needs to be done is in a JIRA ticket (or sticky note, or whatever you use) with a good description. Then it has the potential to be assigned to anyone in your team: cofounder or otherwise. It also means it is recorded, and you can have meetings to discuss priorities. Chuck it in the backlog or…
JIRA's not the only service with Kanban boards/carding, but agree 200%.