[Founder’s Real Talk #8] Where you get energy from

As a founder, most of the time you don’t have a choice of what you have to do. Like you have to be energetic and motivating during all-hands meetings, or roll up your sleeves and have extreme focus on contract negotiations. Even during the trip I mentioned in my last post, I had to edit some client deliverables and draft responses on my train ride from Switzerland to Italy.

It’s ideal if what you have to do is something you enjoy, but most of time it’s unfortunately not, and in the end it causes burnout. There’s no perfect solution, but what I find helpful is to keep a list of things that you can get energy from and resort to it when you are not feeling your best.

1. For our startup, since we have a services-focused business model, a lot of the daily routines are centered around operations and processes and setting up and optimizing structures. For me, those are not the most inspiring work, but what I am interested in is how to productize those things — internally and externally — to make them scalable. That normally leads me to research and get inspirations from other SaaS products, which is charging and replenishing me. Moreover, I often feel sparks when I find ideas worth exploring from other new fields of work, such as fintech and crypto. They often guide me in thinking about how our services can differentiate from others in the market and how we can create something new.
2. I try to cut my attendance at group meetings. Most of the time those are not the most efficient way to spend everyone’s time, if not causing a lot of burns from context switching and aligning many different ideas, and the updates can be done async. What I do get energy from is 1–1 meetings which can be sometimes about key progress updates but more often to brainstorm and bounce ideas around. That’s where you get the most out of everyone’s brain and often the best ideas, especially because a lot of talented people hate expressing ideas in group settings and are much more comfortable expressing and discussing in a private setting.
3. I also listen to a lot of podcasts — mostly on 1–1 interviews (again, where you get the most from one’s mind), and histories/journeys of other companies and brands. These tend to be more interactive / interesting than books — even audio books. And after reading a lot of things, the last thing I want to do (and be healthy for my eyes) is to keep on reading more books. Not to mention, you can often do some walking or even exercise while listening.
4. Writing. I feel tired after talking out loud too much — even from the most engaging and interesting 1–1 conversations. But I feel energetic from writing down my ideas. It’s a great way to organize my thoughts, debate with myself, have sanity checks on my ideas, and sparkle new ideas. It doesn’t have to be long text, and can be some bullet points, some key phrases, or some diagrams.
5. Do your favorite thing. I find it the easiest way to get in the “flow”, which is probably the most healthy thing for your brain. For example, I LOVE playing Chinese pop songs on piano — singing and songwriting has been my passion since a very young age. And I try to carve out at least 1–2 hours a week doing that — playing and singing along with my favorite singers on Youtube/Spotify.
6. Travel. This is different from work travel, but inspirational trips to places you’ve never been to so you can meet unfamiliar people and set yourself in unfamiliar surroundings. I find it the most useful to shift your context, as it’s so easy to get narrow-minded and take things for granted when you get stuck in a place for too long.

These are just some of the things I find powerful and impactful to me. Hope they gave you some helpful ideas!