Managing your startups

De-rusting - week 7/8

Had a great week in hcmc, as I continued meeting smarter people than I am. I am lucky to have such great souls I can reach out to and unselfishly share their knowledge and domain expertise with me.
Answering the questions
I love how they'd ask me probing questions that made me think hard on the answers. While I'm glad I was able to provide some reasonable answers, I'm even more glad that I couldn't on some of the questions. This made me not just think about them but also required me to look into these unanswered questions. Importantly, let them know later to these answers.
In general, as you tell others your idea, you’ll get some silly questions.
!https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1484452330304-377cdeb05340?ixlib=rb-4.0.3&q=85&fm=jpg&crop=entropy&cs=srgb
It’s important to maintain your composure and try to answer as objectively as possible and avoid becoming defensive. These people could potentially be your customers and you can never predict how they perceive what you’re trying to do. The more NOs you can unravel, the better it is for you.
Mental wellness
This may be somewhat long, so please bear with me.
Building your own shit isn’t a walk in the park. I’ve met founders who burnt out, lost interest in what they were doing, and even giving up. Certainly, we’ve also come across even more articles about founders falling deep into the abyss of mental illness.
Let’s be clear about this. Founding a company is done on our own free will. It isn’t forced upon us. Let’s accept the fact that founders are a privilege lot, to be able to choose your own destiny. And other people give you money, too, to realize your destiny. At that point, mentally we are well, until we are not. Like in general health, we are healthy and then somehow we let things slip, and before we know it, we become ill.
How not to let ourselves slip?

1. Pace yourself
   Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither will your success. So chill the eff out. Learn to build momentum and keep to a steady cadence of growth. I know, everything needs to be done by yesterday. So how do you prioritize your work? Strive for good enough, and not perfection. Move on to the next priority, good enough, move, repeat. I'm not advocating sloppiness. I'm saying, perfection takes time, not in one sitting. Focus on the quality and not quantity.
2. Time blocking
   How do you pace? Some would call it ‘time blocking’. In anything you're doing, allocate a time slot, as if you're in a meeting. Finish that task or work within that time frame. If you can't finish, reschedule. If it's not life or death, it can always be rescheduled. When you have a limited time slot, you tend to be more focused in the task you doing, as compared to when you have an open-ended slot.
3. Space
   ​Many of us do one form of exercise or another. Could be running or going to the gym. Block out a time slot as well, and treat it like it's an appointment that you need to go; an appointment with yourself, or me-time. Give yourself that space. Use it however you like; answering non-work emails, text your friends, or just sit there doing nothing. When you consciously do nothing, it's still doing something. Too zen for you? 🤣
   Or read a chapter of a book while sipping tea. The point is, by giving yourself space, you allow your mental muscle to relax and de-flex instead of constantly tightening.

The above are just some of the things I do, hopefully to avoid the dreaded mental breakdown, or to the breaking point. As I’ve said above, we founders choose our paths. We should be happy doing what we set out to do. However, we get to the breaking point because of expectations, expectations from outside sources, like VCs. Startups raise on hope, the potential of reaching that potential as prescribed when we raise. And we raised, so we need to deliver, and then we fall short. And we get into the cycle of downward spiral.
From the point of near-nirvana to the pit, countless things happen and most of that can be prevented. For virgin founders, this may sound ludicrous. But for founders who have failed, this hits quite close to home.
For me at the moment, I’ll just pay attention to all the stories I’ve heard, learn well the lessons of failure of others, try to emulate the habits of successful ones, and focus on building a sound business on solid foundation. I may not build a unicorn, and that’s ok, coz I‘m too old to believe in fairy tale, anyways.

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