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Founder Depression

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Founder Depression

#201

Post by rsp1984 »

EvanMiller wrote: post #87

Dig deeper, Sam. Achievement-oriented people are given to depression both when they fail and when they succeed. If your identity is tied up in your work, then you feel bad about yourself when work isn't going well. That's obvious, and that's the message of this blog post. The implicit message is that you're depressed because you're not succeeding, so get your shit together and succeed and be happy like everyone else.…

Evan, I disagree. Your comment goes to great lengths explaining unhappiness in "achievement-oriented" people but you make the mistake of treating "achievement" and "success" as synonyms and therefore the whole reasoning is wrong.

The reality is that achievement and success are really quite different:

Achievement is (some examples) - running a marathon, - finishing a PhD, - winning a prize at a competition, - getting promoted.

Success is a higher level goal. For a large percentage of males (individual preferences may vary) this includes: - being well off financially, - the love of a girl/woman, - being popular / respect from your peers, - being powerful and influential.

Unhappiness and depression emerge when your achievements are not in alignment with your picture of success or when there exists the notion of a causality in your head between the two. Finishing a PhD can leave you feel empty and exhausted if your definition of success involves making money quickly. Running a marathon might get you nothing but sore legs if your final goal is to win the heart of a woman.

When achievement and success go hand in hand though I see little very room for depression.

Re: Founder Depression

#202

Post by Noxchi »

tim333 wrote: post #194
Noxchi wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything we do in life is to feel a certain way. Anything with a brain is driven to acquire certain feelings and move away from others. And all feelings have to do with the future. That is, feelings are either 1. a prediction of what you believe will happen in the future. For example, happiness is the belief that something good will happen in the future. 2. a feeling that you should feel in the future when you come…

>Everything we do in life is to feel a certain way. I've heard that hypothesised, mostly in Tony Robbins style self help books, but have come to the conclusion that it's an oversimplification of the human condition. I mean if you were building a Mk2 human from scratch you might build it that way be we did not arise that way - we evolved from reptile like creatures which had extra stuff bolted on when they evolved to…

To put it in a different way, everything we do is because of the feelings we feel.

'Feeling' is a very broad term. My definition is the sum of your nervous system's activity.

What your nervous system decides to do - and what you feel like doing, are equal statements in my view.

That doesn't mean there's no inner conflict - there is. But if you imagine every neuron as a voter in a democratic election, the decision that gets the most votes is the one that you feel like doing, even though you are aware there are private interest groups of neurons that want something else.

Re: Founder Depression

#204

Post by ScottBurson »

keithpeter wrote: post #167
courtneypowell wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very pleased to see other HN readers mention the enneagram. A good friend told me about it a couple of years back and I can honestly say it has helped me better understand myself and others. I see lots of 3's in startups, along with some 1's and 7's. I agree that 5's/8's seem to make up the majority of engineers I've met.

"...I can honestly say it has helped me better understand myself and others" And that I think is the value of these typologies. Reading the Wikipedia page about the enneagram, I see a system of nine types with three sub-types, various connections between the types, 'wings' and 'drives'. Am I being cynical if I think that system considered in the abstract is sufficiently rich to support almost any interpretation?

Yes.

There is a lot of meat to the Enneagram. If you want to understand yourself better, it's a great thing to study -- and once you see how it applies to you, you'll see there really is something to it.

Re: Founder Depression

#206

Post by carrotleads »

gnl wrote: post #180
EvanMiller wrote: post #87

Dig deeper, Sam. Achievement-oriented people are given to depression both when they fail and when they succeed. If your identity is tied up in your work, then you feel bad about yourself when work isn't going well. That's obvious, and that's the message of this blog post. The implicit message is that you're depressed because you're not succeeding, so get your shit together and succeed and be happy like everyone else.…

Well said. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg [1:41 "It's not about the nail"] The video is about women, because as men we like to take pride in the idea that we're "fixers", but if we're honest about it we'll have to admit that when it comes to the important things in life we're just as full of crap. No amount of talking, hand-holding, support groups and nods of understanding will amount to any kind of perso…

That was well put...

Re: Founder Depression

#208

Post by kreeben »

redthrowaway wrote: post #169
EvanMiller wrote: post #87

Dig deeper, Sam. Achievement-oriented people are given to depression both when they fail and when they succeed. If your identity is tied up in your work, then you feel bad about yourself when work isn't going well. That's obvious, and that's the message of this blog post. The implicit message is that you're depressed because you're not succeeding, so get your shit together and succeed and be happy like everyone else.…

>Founders need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask themselves why they're doing what they're doing I'm happy. The happiest I've ever been, in fact. I just graduated after a decade of fucking around and I have a job that I enjoy and that pays me fairly well. Tomorrow, I'm going to buy myself a motorcycle. I like my friends. Life is good. I've never been able to look in a mirror and honestly answer that question.…

When you are down you question yourself a lot more than when you are up. When you are depressed that is all you end up doing. When life is good things aotomatically falls into place becuase you realize that it doesn't matter what you do, all paths are alright, we are all star dust, a spec of life in an ocean of nothing and all that, and in the end it it won't matter if you got good at js or c#. I wouldn't worry about feeling up and oblivious as to why. Just be happy you are.

Re: Founder Depression

#209

Post by cm2012 »

marincounty wrote: post #176
niels_olson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not spot on. Depression is depression. And the answer is to talk to somebody. That's actually the cold hard evidence-based answer. Talk. To somebody.

I've thought a lot about depression over the years. I also talked to a Psychiatrist about my melancholy for over 20 years. He has told me there are basically three differnt types of depression; situational(your life sucks), dysthymia(low level depression, that seems to linger), clinical depression(you want to end it all). Supposedly, drugs are effective in clinical depression--I don't think I have been that depressed…

For my wife with severe clinical depression, Prozaz literally saves her life. The difference is night and day.

Re: Founder Depression

#210

Post by digita88 »

For founders, it is a good idea to scope which socio-economic-environmental factors would contribute to their dissonance or depression. For me it's the lack of face-to-face contact, being an 'outlier' in so many respects, being in an environment that is not as innovative or open to entrepreneurs and so on. The list is not that encouraging but as long as the factors are known at least they are 'known'. Also these factors can easily contribute to freelancers, independent workers, etc.

The next item to know is that there are factors that would actively contribute to depression. I used to have some really bad habits that would otherwise feed into some sort of circle of depression and these would pop up when I am triggered. These habits formed because of thought patterns that I have somewhat developed growing up. Whenever I feel the triggers, I need to make sure that I don't engage in any of these bad habits or that if I do, I need to try and get out of that zone.

I've had my first episode when I was really young - culminated in a few sessions with a psychologist at school - so I've had this affliction for a while now. On top of that, I've been entrepreneurial since I was young so I think that the external 'being a founder' is hard to separate from the biology.

It's a bit of a circle for me - I get in founder phases and then when the business or idea fizzles out or when I need the cash, I get into employee phase which then culminates in me wanting to get my feet back into the entrepreneur game... and so on and so forth. At the moment I'm in that founder phase and have made commitments and arrangements so that I don't get back into being an employee for at least January 2015.

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