What to do when you feel you are going to burnout?
Abay Dautov
2 replies
I have recently founded a startup and we are currently prepairing for launch. It has been 4 stressful month and I started to feel that not only I suffer from the pressure of working a lot but also my family.
What do you do in this case?
Replies
Ben Dalziel@bdalziel
I'm sorry to hear you're struggling. I've been in your situation many times.
Noticing is super important (so you're off to a good start!).
In this situation, I remember that I can't show up fully to work, or to my family, until I show up fully for myself. So that should be the priority. Whatever it takes.
You'll get through this. Take care.
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Castofly
I think it's very different for an employee and a business founder.
When I was working on my offline business (closed a few years ago), it did harm my personal life, but was a great learning / networking adventure. But it was really easy to fight the burnout because it was a seasonal business (supboards rental station in Aktau).
But when I think about my career story, whenever I've felt burnout, I just reminded myself that no company would for me - they could replace me in a span of few weeks - and so I also should be ready to 'die' for the company and think about my mental and physical health first.
If it really pressures your family, I would do these (if you haven't already):
- freeze the scope - don't add any new features / business tasks to your todo list.
- extend the deadline as much as you can - getting things done quickly is important, but your mental health and relationships with family are way more important.
If you really feel the pressure and it's too much, it only means that you've miscalculated the scope of the project or time to achieve it, or both. Most of the projects fail in terms of meeting the original time limitation, so it's absolutely fine to not push yourself too hard.
At the end of the day, you're most probably doing it for yourself and your Family. So, if it does put them into pressure - then find a way to release that pressure from them. Because it is you who have committed to your business, but not your family (but if they did agree to it with you in the beginning, then it's a completely different story :D)
Anyways, good luck with your launch!