What to do when you're overwhelmed
Stress is good
Hi all —
There’s a joke I like to tell: Being a founder is like getting a master’s degree in psychology, because you get to experience one existential crisis per week and learn about how much stress the human mind can take.
The funny part of the joke? Only one existential crisis per week would be a great f*cking week.
Every founder I work with is overwhelmed. I’ve talked before about the MBA Virus, the overthinker’s dilemma, and my sneaking suspicion that IQ is negatively correlated with early-stage startup success.
How do you operate despite the stress? Here’s my approach:
1: Reframe Stress
Stress is bad, right? It’s painful, it leads to bad decisions, and it’s probably not correlated to longevity or happiness.
Maybe, maybe not.
I’ve realized there are two reframes I can do on stress to spend less time in the “pain cave” and more time executing and thinking clearly.
Reframe 1: Stress is a blessing.
Imagine a life without stress. You’d have nothing to aim for, no quests. People who design their lives to avoid stress are weak - if you don’t flex the stress muscle, you don’t grow. You don’t create anything new. You don’t become a better version of yourself.
Stress is a blessing. It means you’re grappling with difficult things, facing reality firsthand, trying to make something meaningful happen.
Embrace the stress, love the pain. It is a gift.
Plus, there is no such thing as a life without stress. You either create your own stress by trying to accomplish meaningful things, OR existential stress finds you when you realize you’ve sought nothing, risked nothing, and wasted life. Go find stress, don’t let it come to you.
Reframe 2: Stress is a choice.
Now that you embrace stress, realize that you get to choose how you react to it.
You can either let it weigh you down… or use it to fuel you.
You can either let it cloud your judgment… or use it as an opportunity to see clearly.
There’s no iron law of nature that says stress must break you.
It’s your choice.
2: Solve Problems
Something is causing you stress. How do you solve it?
I’ve developed two approaches to stress:
Freak out
Observe, hypothesize, action plan
I don’t recommend the first. The second is actually useful.
Here’s how to do it:
Observe: Open a Google doc and write what’s going on. Write from the perspective of a disinterested 3rd party… no emotions, feelings, self-criticism, defensiveness. Simply write down what’s going on. Include data if you have it. The goal is to come up with the #1 problem or root cause - if you solve this, most of the stress will go away.
Hypothesize: Write down a couple of approaches you could take to solve the problem.
Note: At this point, I tend to try to get someone else to look at this doc. It helps to have someone with an outside perspective to check your thinking and make suggestions of other hypotheses.
Action plan: Write down the set of steps you’re going to take, based on which approach(es) you choose. I try to make this extremely practical, and put time blocks on my calendar for (1) doing the work, (2) checking on progress, (3) reviewing the outcome.
Hope this helps. Go get it.