The Uncommon Founder #20

Since the last newsletter, my wife and I have moved from London to France. For the time being we’re based in Biarritz whilst we look around for a house for the long term in the nearby area. Yes my baguette and croissant intake has increased ten fold, yes French bureaucracy is as bad as they say (especially when you’re expecting a baby and changing to a new healthcare system), no my French isn’t fluent yet but rapidly improving, and yes it is a phenomenal place to live between the surfing beaches and the mountains!

A la prochaine fois.

Seb

Dear burnt out founder,

Yes you - the one who said you’re ‘feeling a bit tired’ when what you really meant was that you’re currently a hollow shell filled with doom, anxiety and helplessness.

The one asking yourself when you became this version of you and if the old you even exists anymore.

The one who knows something isn’t right but is telling yourself that you can just push through - to the next funding round, the next product release, the next hire or just the next weekend.

This is what you do; this is what you’ve always done.

You can stop looking over your shoulder now, because this is written for you.

Burnout and founderdom

Lots of people burn out. Fact. Yet founders burn out more than most.

There’s the full-on nature of founderdom - the psychological enmeshment of what you do for a living with your sense of self. The realisation that you have completely and utterly hitched yourself to a single wagon, which at any given moment may be struggling to get uphill, or steaming out-of-control downhill.

There’s the workload - the emails, and the meetings, and the interviews, and the board. And when those die down, the never-ending barrage of demands, each with its promise to swallow precious time that you simply don’t have.

And then in those rare, quiet moments there’s the guilt, whispering in your ear to do more and undermining your belief in what is enough.

And of course the endless uncertainty. Where’s the next deal/funding round/product breakthrough/set of users/moment of calm/moment of joy/exit/great hire…coming from?

But I don’t need to tell you that the founder’s life is fraught with potential hazards - you’ve already discovered that for yourself.

Should I just give up?

This is a question that consumes more headspace than most, burnt out or otherwise, would care to admit. Intrusive thoughts often appearing in those moments of envy as their well-salaried employee packs up for the evening to go and do something that’s not actually work - like a resident of the Silo who declares ‘I want to go out!’

Some will give up - through overt decisions to step back or close down; or a more covert psychological rebellion, quietly letting the business decline and refusing to make the decisions that would lock them in further.

I would say there’s no shame in either; but often there is - those who step away can be riddled with it even if we think they shouldn’t be.

But the threat of shame is not a great reason to continue. Can it spur you on for a while? Sure. Is it a long-term energetic well to draw from? Absolutely not.

To continue, there has to be a part of you, even the most subtle internal glimmer, that believes in the purpose of the work and in a potential future where the work doesn’t cost you your health. No belief in either and it may be time to call it quits.

For those that continue, the path ahead will vary depending on the current state. Burnout is not a two-way switch that’s on or off, but a dimmer that turns up or down. So what’s needed most depends on just how dim the bulb is right now. But know this - that whatever state you find yourself in, burnout’s not an inevitability to be accepted. There are many things that cause it; important warning signs to look out for; effective strategies to avoid it; and valid paths to recovery if you’re already there.

What follows here is an outline of different causes of burnout. It may not be universally exhaustive but covers the common cases I observe amongst clients (NOTE that they are not mutually exclusive so people may well be dealing with multiple). My hope is that by understanding these mechanisms a little better, you may spot new opportunities for yourself that weren’t apparent before.

Overwhelm

Overwhelm is like a DDoS attack that bombards the nervous system until it slows to a crawl or crashes altogether.

When the bombardment goes unmanaged for long periods and turns into chronic stress, the nervous system ‘crash’ can happen by moving into a Dorsal vagal state - a mode of self-preservation through shutdown.

Warning signs

• Increased brain fog - lack of mental clarity and inability to focus on one thing.

• Decision fatigue - an inability to make decisions and/or an increasing sense of resentment or even despair at the thought of making decisions.

• Feelings of pessimism or even hopelessness - not just occasional self-doubt but a pervasive sense that things are destined to fail no matter what you do.

• Irritability - stuff bugs you way more than it usually does.

Strategies

We can borrow from the DDoS analogy and think about rate limiting here i.e. placing boundaries on the volume of requests that a single source can send to a system.

For founders those boundaries are mostly set through prioritisation and delegation. In real terms that can mean:

• Hiring a Chief of Staff and using them as a first line of defence on your time / a right hand to take things off your plate but still feel connected to them.

• Keeping a list of all the things you’re actively deprioritising to declutter your mind.

• Communicating clear priorities with the team to ensure requests are limited to the things that are truly most important right now.

• Aligning your to-do list and your calendar - every time something crops up on the to-do list, head straight to your calendar and book in time to get it done. If there is no time then start saying no to stuff, or figure out who can do it instead.

• Establishing the things you truly need to own vs. those that can be delegated, and making sure you have the mechanisms in place to stay appropriately informed for the delegated stuff.

Recommended reading

• Give away your legos - delegation as a key to scaling

• Four Thousand Weeks - prioritisation

• The Hard Thing about Hard Things - normalising the chaos

Delusions of control

So much pain (and plenty of burnout) is caused by delusions of control. In a world you control, every problem can be analysed and solved if only you work hard enough. Your job is one of a supercomputer - to model every possible outcome in your head and then take the actions needed to arrive at the optimal destination. It’s the founder equivalent of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal.

But total control is a fools errand. A desire that remains eternally out of reach. If predictability and control are what you need then you’re in the wrong job, because innovation and control are not willing bedfellows. Of course investors/markets/capitalism want them to be, with demands for outsized returns on a predictable cadence; but innovation means doing new things and taking risks, and that means you’re not fully in control.

It’s false expectations of control that ratchet up anxiety as you grasp for something that doesn’t exist - speedrunning simulations of the future and trying to get ahead of every problem before it arises, eventually causing the type of burnout system shutdown described above.

Warning signs

• Perpetual anxiety loops - worrying excessively about things that lie outside of your control

• Micromanagement, blame and fingerpointing - desperation for control can extend to overbearing behaviour towards others

Strategies

Accepting that you don’t control everything is not the same as throwing your hands up in despair as if you control nothing.

The approach I think about here comes down to a few key things:

• Defining what’s in your control and what’s not - this can be done at a market, company, team and individual level. You may need to challenge your mental models of the world along the way.

• For those things you do control, get really good at measuring and managing them. I’d recommend High Output Management by Andrew Grove as an oldie but a goodie on this.

• Adopt more adaptive strategies for the things you don’t control. I like the work of David Snowden and the Cynefin model here - the model outlines four types of systems and the appropriate strategies for each. I could characterise a lot of the problems around control as trying to treat a complex or even chaotic system (building a company), as a clear system that calls for best practice.

Recommended reading

• Cynefin - a good model on complexity and control.

• Courage to be disliked - a primer on Adlerian psychology and what you individually control.

• High Output Management - probably still the best management book around for getting to grips with the things you do control.

• The Creative Act - a fun read on creativity by Rick Rubin and an important reminder than not everything great comes about through control.

• The Tao of Pooh - a charming book that brings together two great things, Winnie the Pooh and Taoism, both of which have plenty to say about the nature of control.

Inequity

Inequity is the sense that you are carrying more than your fair share. This can apply in many contexts but most commonly arises between co-founders in times of stress - with one, or even all of the founders believing they are burdened by more workload and/or mental load. If allowed to fester into resentment it saps energy and motivation and fans the flames of burnout.

Warning signs

• Co-founder conflict/resentment/disengagement - to be clear, co-founders should be disagreeing on things, and no disagreement at all can be its own warning sign; but inequity can poison the well that such all conversations are tainted.

• Increased sense of victimhood - a heightened sense that you have the raw end of the deal and that others are to blame.

Strategies

There is lots to say on co-founder relationships and it’s a topic I’ve written about before. Ideally a lot happens from the inception of the relationship to set it on the right path, but even if that’s not the case there’s plenty that can still be done:

• Creating a co-founder charter - this is something I like to work on with clients. Its basically a contract between co-founders around how they want to work together. The artefact itself, and the conversations to create it, are intended to create a greater understanding and alignment between co-founders that can mitigate inequity. If inequity and resentment are already present, then creating the charter can serve as an important reset moment.

• Turning up as a good co-founder - do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. That means taking accountability for your end of the deal and continuing to show up as a good co-founder regardless of feelings of inequity. My colleague Erik has this simple principle I love - the 51/49 - which states that even when you’re not directly responsible, you still need to show up as a highly involved and supportive partner. Too often co-founders divide responsibilities and then turn up as a 0 for everything that’s not theirs e.g. a CTO who stays away from everything commercial; or a CEO who has no involvement in the product. If you turn up as a good co-founder, you’re far more likely to get that same treatment.

• Redistribute responsibilities as needed - sometimes there is genuine inequity in workload and a need for redistribution.

• Mechanisms to recognise each other’s contributions - this often gets ignored. You may be quick to highlight good work by employees and fail to ever say good job to your co-founder. This can be as simple as a gif you send each other on Slack to recognise a good moment, or a regular part of your 1-1s.

• Lean into hard conversations - as the light dims for people and the feelings of burnout increase, retreat becomes a coping mechanism, particularly away from anything deemed a hard conversation. But retreat has the unfortunate consequence of making things worse. So where possible, at a pace and setting that seems manageable, those conversations need to start happening.

Recommended reading

• 51:49 model of accountability - a great model for turning up as a good partner.

• Self accountability in relationships - a good primer from Esther Perel. Written for romantic relationships but a lot holds true for co-founders.

Spiritual disconnect

Spiritual disconnect is how I’d describe the sense that you’re doing the wrong thing with your life. Don’t get me wrong, everyone asks themselves whether or not they’re doing the right thing from time to time, but when that becomes a pervasive sense that you are living at odds with your purpose, nothing drains the tank faster.

Strategies

I think the primary strategy here is about truth seeking - is it true that I’m doing the wrong thing with my life?

That usually means carving out the time and space to reflect on some stuff:

• Is now the right moment for me to answer this? If I’m burnt out for other reasons should I address those first?

• What am I optimising for?

• Is there a clear right thing?

• Why did I start this company?

• Could I shape this to be the right thing?

• What really motivates me?

• What does a life well lived mean to me?

• What is impact? What is mastery?

• What do I want from the world and what does the world want from me?

But let’s also face it - many of us go through our entire lives trying to answer these questions, and even when we do, they adapt over time. So another question to ask might be:

• What if I took the pressure off, stopped trying to answer the big questions, and just gave myself a free shot at this?

Alongside the reflection, there may be interesting opportunities to experiment. For example, if you feel disconnected from your original source of motivation for starting the company, is there a way to reconnect once more? To spend more time with users? To spend a bit more of your time writing code? To delegate some of the things that stand in the way of those wells of motivation?

Recommended reading

• Range - an important counternarrative to the idea of a single path to mastery

• Flounder mode - a fun profile of Kevin Kelly, a living example of the non-linear path

• Anatomy of anxiety - a great book to help unpick the different sources of anxiety

• Chop wood carry water - a good parable about the journey vs. destination

Neurodivergence

Neurodivergence is not a cause of burnout per se, but it can heighten the risk for a host of reasons:

• Masking - the extra effort to appear neurotypical and cover up certain needs and behaviours.

• Sensory overload - heightened sensitivity in a chaotic environment.

• Bridging the gap - added emotional and cognitive burden to be understood and to understand others.

• Executive function - planning, organisation, comms etc. can be disproportionately taxing.

Strategies

There is too much to say about neurodiversity to do real justice here, but at a high level neurodivergent founders face the question of how much they should adapt to their environment vs. how much their environment should adapt to them.

The good news is founders have high agency to shape their environment - in another organisational setting they’d have no choice but to mould themselves.

The less good news is they don’t always exercise that agency, sometimes through shame and sometimes through an under-appreciation of the extent to which they get to build things as they wish vs. following the playbooks.

The specific needs will vary, but the macro strategy as far as I’m concerned is to understand the specific needs associated with someone’s form of neurodivergence, and to exercise the agency they have to create an environment in which they can work most effectively.

*Whatever your experience of burnout, there are some universal healthy foundations which will always help - sleep, exercise, nutrition, human connection, time in nature. If you feel stumped on all the specifics then these are your home base to come back to no matter what. Everything else will start to feel easier as a result.

So despair not dear founder. Brighter days lie ahead.

Yours sincerely,

Seb