Burnout

Burnout is a lack of connection.

I look at burnout as a variant of depression. It's a distinct lack of motivation. Burnout results when founders lack a connection to themselves - their changing needs, their values, and/or their passion - and they cannot re-establish this connection. It is a wound of recurring self-abandonment. When a founder is burned out, they have stopped listening to themselves and giving themselves what they need to replenish, rest, heal, or simply sustain. Unfortunately when founders endure this disconnection for years - by ignoring real feelings of tiredness, sadness, or a subtle dis-ease that ‘something isn’t right, I shouldn't feel this way, change is needed’ - they also lose connection with other sensations that would serve to bring them replenishment - joy, play, enthusiasm, hope, love, passion, drive.

The goal of all of my burnout work is to reconnect the founder with what they've lost a sense of. The ELI5 of my general clinical map is to help founders: 1/ stop doing what feels bad, knowing that it is; 2/ to start doing what feels good, trusting that it will be; and 3/ to create an understanding that any bad that comes along with the new good is generally because it's unfamiliar rather than bad.

Burned out founders are also often scared founders. They don't recognize themselves anymore and that's scary. They know themselves as incredibly competent, motivated, powerhouse human beings - capable of regularly achieving the impossible - and their burnout does not fit into this identity. Out of this fear, burned out founders often want to ‘go back to when’ they had a ton of energy and felt capable and motivated. They long to be who they used to be. However, it isn't possible to 'revert change' - to reclaim an identity that’s been changed by the dripping of their life’s circumstances. Although founders don’t realize it, it’s also not actually desirable to do that. In addition to being impossible, 'going back' would invalidate everything the founder has experienced and achieved in the interim years. Although also filled with suffering, periods of burnout are also moments that hold value, learning, goodness, and growth. Instead of trying to go back to the way they used to feel and who they used to be, I encourage founders to start re-establishing a connection to who they are now, and what they need now.

I've found there to be a few common types of burnout, each described below. I hope you use this as a rough self-assessment and guide to developing a deep reconnection to whatever it is that will make you feel alive, inspired, and yourself again (anew ;):

Burnout Type I: Disconnection from Passion

Founders can burn out when they're disconnected for too long from the passion, inspiration, vision, and/or the user they first started their company to solve a need for.

This is common when, for example, a team grows and the technical cofounder/CTO moves from writing code to managing people and so loses contact with their love of craft. Or when a product-focused founder hires a team under them and loses their direct connection to their user. Or when a company shifts into enterprise from B2B and the CEO can no longer really recognize the vision of company they originally started. Reconnection here means evaluating what makes you feel the most alive - rediscovering your passion, your inspiration, and/or your vision - and then making adjustments to your day-to-day that don't rock the boat or introduce chaos into your org structure - in order to create a role or a schedule in which you regularly feel that way again.

Passion and inspiration are two of the emotional fuel sources that keep founders motivated. They are the invisible ropes that founders use to pull their vision closer toward reality; they are necessary components of every founders' emotional toolkit. Cultivating them in your day-to-day is an existential priority for the startup so long as the founder's continued presence at the startup is also required for its success.

Try to imagine working at your highest capacity while feeling resentful. It's pretty hard when so much of your bandwidth is being diverted by your resentment to thoughts and feelings about how unfair your situation is. Try to imagine what it would feel like for your cofounder to (innocently) ask that you fix some small mistake, or check in on the status of a sales lead or bug fix for example. If you harbor even a small amount of resentment, these neutral requests could easily trigger a cascade of irritation, anger, dismissiveness, or defensiveness. Your resentment has multiplied itself into other negative emotions, and now spilled out into your relationship in what should have been an emotionally neutral, easy conversation. And if you react in this way, then naturally your cofounder is likely to get frustrated or defensive in reaction to you, which then serves to confirm your resentful beliefs about them being a jerk. The resentful cycle continues as feelings intensify - now on both sides.

Burnout Type II: Disconnect between internal values and external world

Founders can burn out when their value systems change but their work schedule or role does not.

I see this kind of burnout the most when founders become parents but keep working the same hours and expecting the same performance from themselves as before. They don't make adjustments to their role or schedule to accommodate the tectonic shift in their priorities and value systems. These founders often don't think they're allowed to make changes to how much they work. They don't know how to create a boundary between their work and personal lives in order to maintain both. They're also often terrified of working less than the 80+ hours/week that they're used to (even though they know it's destroying them), and use the fact of their newly-enlarged family as a reason to maintain the status quo and therefore their suffering, which causes more suffering.

Founders with this type of burnout don't give themselves permission to change, and so they suffer under the weight of the reality they reject.

What needs to be shifted here is that these founders need to be caught up to the recognition that when their lives change drastically, so too can their work. When these founders recognize that they can be parents and startup founders - that they can connect healthfully to both identities and create a balanced life that incorporates both - they begin to heal. Developing an understanding of your priorities and values - and then matching up your worklife so that it's congruent - is the reparative task here.

Burnout Type III: Disconnection from reciprocity

Founders can burn out when they feel a longstanding imbalance of giving more to their startup than they're getting in return. 

This is common when a founder has been toiling nonstop for years but not seeing breakaway growth, and/or they've been paying themselves so little for so long that they're really suffering. This is also common when a founder's life has been consumed by their startup to the extent that they've neglected other valuable areas. Or if they've been putting out crisis after crisis for years and their startup has drained them of emotional resources.

In all cases, these founders are past the point where they feel that their startup is giving back to them in a meaningful enough way to keep going. Every additional day of work is an additional day of distressed 'taking.' The startup has become an emotional parasite.

What's needed here is for the founder to re-establish connection to anything that will provide them with a sense of being 'given' to, or taken care of by their startup - and the more sources, the better. This could look like a salary increase, an exploration of new hobbies or relationships that provide the founder with alternative connections and sources of inspiration and vitality, or different self-care practices that the founder feels are deeply nourishing and easily repeatable.

Burnout Type IV: Disconnection from rest

Founders can burn out from accumulated exhaustion. 

This kind of burnout happens when founders work on their startup for years at an intense pace without taking meaningful pauses to rest or replenish along the way. This is a deep feeling of exhaustion in the founder's soul, which the founder often protects themselves from truly acknowledging.

This founder is often afraid of their burnout. They can intellectually see how their burnout is affecting their memory, their health, their focus, their performance, and their relationships, but still these founders have a difficult time acknowledging their need for rest. They are afraid of what they perceive they'll 'lose' if they slow down. They do not know how to do this, having never practiced it.

They are often afraid that their burnout makes them "less than a founder." This is a rejection of reality - they cannot hold the duality of being a founder while also being tired. They have not created for themselves an identity that can incorporate both facts.

They are often extremely productive and incredibly successful, but they can also feel quite lonely. They have abandoned themselves, put themselves out of touch with their own authentic and healthy need for occasional rest, and so therefore also often have a difficult time being in authentic deep connection with others.

The most important thing these founders can do, is to slowly create comfort with the idea that they can have a need for something different - and that they can also meet that need. 

Ask yourself questions, and listen for the answers, and start to rebuild from the truth you discover:

• What do I feel right now?

• What do I need?

• If I could give myself anything in the world right now, what would it be?

• Realistically, what's stopping me from doing that?

• Can I give myself permission to feel what I feel?

• If nothing changes to my life, and I fast-forward 5 years, how will I feel then?

• What is the vision I want for my life and how does my current behavior fit in with that?

• If I were to take time off, what could I do? Where would I go?

• Do I believe that successful founders are able to give themselves that?

• Can I create success by doing the same for myself?