Congratulations! Your risk for Startup Burnout is very low at the moment.
Based on your answers, it looks like you are handling startup stress very well. However, you might want to be careful!
Startup Burnout Stage 1
Startup Burnout comes in different stages. You are currently in the so called first stage of burnout.
It seems a little silly to call this a burnout stage. But research shows that a lot of startup founders start here and then later develop a full burnout.
Especially is you are determined to prove yourself, you might end up in the danger zone. This burnout stage is also called ‘The Honeymoon Stage’ referring to that feeling of optimism and enthusiasm. It’s awesome to feel this way, but it can also pull you into exhaustion if you don’t watch out.
How to Prevent Burnout?
Make sure you stick to (or develop) a good routine that helps you to energize and recharge. Making long days might seem like a necessity when building a business, but that is actually a myth.
Sure, sometimes it’s necessary to burn the midnight oil, but make sure it’s an exception, not a general rule. The best way to speed up your startup process and build faster is to stay fresh and sharp.
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. You might want to check out the ebook ‘Escaping Founder Burnout’. It drills into the way founders are getting trapped into working harder and harder, eventually exhausting themselves. Of course, it also provides strategies to prevent that.
Keep up the good work
If something works well, why change it, right? Since you are handling things well, I would advise you to sit down and look at your own best practices.
What exactly are you doing to stay focused? How do you recharge? Is your work/life balance okay, and if so, what helps you there? And if not, write down how you could improve it.
Make this document part of your personal mission statement and review it regularly. It will help you stay on course.
Stay Focused with Curbn
If you want to create time to recharge, you’ll really need to know what the most important thing to do is and what can wait. So, set up a system that is easy to maintain and helps you to prioritize. Having that kind of overview helps you to stay calm, especially when things get stressful.
In the following months, I will be developing a new product ‘50 Times Smarter‘, that will teach startup founders and entrepreneurs how to work smarter instead of harder using their own tools.
The key objective of ‘50 x Smarter‘ is to reduce the stress your heavy workload causes you. It would not be realistic to say ‘reduce the workload’, but learning a smarter way to prioritize and deal with the endless e-mails and tasks on your to-do list will help you to stay on top of things.
I hope to publish the first part in January 2025, so bear with me. In the meantime, here’s already some advice:
End your day with a moment to tie all loose ends.
Collect all the ideas, to-do’s and unfinished tasks , put them on your to-do list and schedule what needs to be scheduled.
With ‘50 x Smarter‘, I hope to teach you exactly how to do this. With simple hacks in the tools you already use. Sometimes it’s about a feature you didn’t know yet, other times it’s about using something in a different way or picking up on a new habit.
But we’re not there yet. So, for the time being, I’ll just share some of that knowledge in my newsletter. So keep an eye on your mailbox and dig out the trash can (spam) if you want to stay in the loop.