“How Do I Avoid Burnout?” | Ask Dave Kashen

This question of burnout comes up a lot for startup founders. Um, the question is, how do I avoid burnout? I think there's a couple keys. First, um, I think burnout is caused as much by resistance as it is by just working a lot. So like, I know some founders who work crazy amount of hours but don't burn out, while others work actually less hours than them but do burn out. So it's not just about quantity, although we'll talk about quantity in a second. I think a lot of it is resistance. And what I mean by that is often we're like choosing to do something but resisting doing it at the same time. And so that like inner resistance drains our energy And, you know, like example I'll give for myself was my taxes. So like every year around tax time, I would be like, oh God, I gotta prepare my taxes. You know, I had a tax accounting firm, but I still have to do like the prep to, you know, give them the information. And I made, you know, I was so grumpy, you know, poor, my poor wife and kids that like right around that time I'd get so grumpy and I'd sit down and I'd do it and I'd be like, ah. Um, and then a few things happened. One, uh, I had a coach who said, you know, you don't actually have to do your taxes. I was like, oh, like I thought, you know, death and taxes, right? Aren't like those the two mandatory obligations? And she's like, nope, you actually don't have to do your taxes. There's just consequences, you know, you might pay fines, you might go to jail. I was like, okay, that's like That's interesting. And so first it was this notion of it being an obligation. Like, anything we do from obligation, we automatically resist. It automatically is like less energizing or drains our energy. So I let go of seeing it as an obligation, and then I think that helped me just let go of resisting it. I was like, okay, I'm choosing to do it because I, I don't want to pay taxes or go to jail, and I like living here in the United States of America. So I just chose to let go of resisting it. And it was wild, like it was just no big deal. I would just sit down and spend a couple hours and, you know, do the things I needed to do. And so for me, that was like a great example. And I see this with founders all the time. There's a whole bunch of things that are just part of building a startup that, you know, founders are like, ah, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do this part, but I have to. Oh, fundraising. Oh, I have to do fundraising. Right? Like it's this big obligation. It's like, well, you don't have to do fundraising. It's just if you want capital to grow your business, then, you know, asking other people for it is part of the deal. And so there's all sorts of things like that from the administrative stuff to, you know, whatever are the parts of the job that you've decided are obligations or you don't want to do. And then resist them. So that's the first thing I would just look at, like, where are you, like, choosing to do it? Meaning, like, you're doing it, so clearly you're choosing to do it, but also resisting it at the same time. And then, and then the other piece is, um, you know, one of the, one of the 15 commitments of Conscious Leadership is about, like, honoring your body's natural rhythms and, you know, taking the time to renew And I think a lot of founders think it's like heroic to like, you know, just push through, right? 996, baby, right? That's the big— I think it's from Asia, from China, maybe like, you know, work 9 to 9, 6 days a week is like a meme right now. And, you know, I think if that's what you want to do, that can be fine. I'm not sure it's actually most effective for most people in terms of output. Right. Like, that's a, you know, it's worth distinguishing, right? The goal is results, not just bragging about how much you work. So it is funny. I see all these like LinkedIn posts of like video, you know, like these fast motion videos of like, look how we're always in the office. Like, that's the badge of honor. You know, it's like, well, show me your results. Like, that's what I'm, you know, that's what I'll be impressed with. That said, Obviously, to some degree, the amount of hours you work correlates to, you know, results, certainly for certain things like coding and things like that. So if we try to ignore our body's natural rhythm, our body will force us to go into renewal mode. So there's a book, old, oldie but goodie book called The Power of Full Engagement. And they lay out this model of like these 4 zones that we operate from. So the, you know, if you imagine this like 2x2 matrix, like the upper right quadrant is like the performance zone where we're just like in flow and, you know, operating at our best. And then we, it's basically like high energy and positive, right? So the scale is like, you know, high energy, low energy, positive, negative. So as we, if we try to do that for too long, we kind of drift over toward this survival zone where we're still trying to put forth a lot of energy. So, still high energy, but we start to go negative and we're like, "Oh, God." You start to get drained and you're really pushing and forcing yourself. And then, eventually, your body is just done. It will force you to renuke by going into burnout zone. So, that's kind of the common cycle is we start out in performance zone, we end up in survival zone because we keep trying to push through our body's natural rhythms and limitations. And then we end up burned out. And so, the sort of prescription that the book says is the lower right quadrant is the renewal zone where you're purposefully, you're still positive, but you're purposefully going to things that don't require energy, right? Low energy or even give you energy. And you're just kind of bouncing back and forth like a sine curve between performance zone and renewal zone. So, essentially all that is pointing to like baking in rituals of renewal throughout the day, the week, the month, the year. So that could look like, you know, every few hours go for a walk or, you know, go, go meditate for a few minutes or even like call a friend, you know, just do something that doesn't require a lot of energy or even gives you energy every few hours. Ideally, you know, you bake that in throughout your week. You know, like I know so many founders like I haven't taken a vacation in, you know, 19 months. Like, like, as if, again, that's like a status symbol. Like, that's just not how humans are wired. Everything in nature is cyclical, right? Our heartbeat, our breathing, right? We're meant to work in cycles. So what I see is the founders who honor, like, those cycles in our body's natural rhythm are actually way more effective long-term and even kind of, you know, medium-term. Um, and if you get, you know, I do see with coding in particular Although now I don't know how it's changing with, you know, cloud and AI. But interestingly, I did talk to a founder recently who said, I used to need to be like totally locked in and need like, you know, many, many straight hours of just like locked in, undistracted. And he was like, now I can code on the, you know, on the subway, like, you know, with AI. Because it requires a little less concentration because, you know, AI does the hard work and then you edit it, which is kind of interesting. So that may even be changing what I was about to say. But I have seen, you know, a lot of examples where, you know, if you're coding, it can be useful to like really lock in and go deep on the problem. But then at some— even if that's for many days, at some point you got to take a break and let your system renew. So those would be the two major things I see lead to burnout. Um, you know, the first is like resisting the things that you're doing while doing them, and the second is just not honoring your natural rhythms. There might be a third as I'm thinking about it, which is, um, like if you don't have an empowering context, meaning like either you're not living into an exciting future, you know, like or there's no sense of meaning to what you're doing at all. Like, you know, it doesn't have to be this, you know, mission, you're trying to save the whales. But, you know, if you care a lot about your team members' development, or you want to make a certain amount of money because, you know, it's important to some future that you want, your lifestyle, or giving back or something, like, if there's no sense of meaning in it at all, it might you know, it's probably not going to be as energizing. Or if you're living into a future, meaning like you're imagining a future that's negative but you're still working really hard, that's probably going to be draining. Like, if you don't actually believe you're going to succeed but you're just sort of like crushing yourself because you're scared to fail. But like, when I say living into a future, I just mean like in your mind's eye when you like picture what's going to happen in the future. If you actually picture failure and you're working hard, like you're probably going to burn yourself out that way as well. Nice. That third one I was actually going to bring up. So, oh, nice. So yeah, it's like feeling like you're losing, but if you're working hard, burnout. But if you feel like you're winning, you can have a lot more energy to keep going. Totally. And that, you know, that's useful too if you think about leadership, right? Like, same question could be, how do I get my team to not burn out? You know, similar answers, especially that third one. As a leader, like, one of the, the biggest levers you have as a leader is to sort of shape the future that your people are living into. So if you think you're, you know, you're going to lose, you're scared you're going to lose, and you're spending a lot of time thinking about that, you know, that's probably gonna kind of spill out, you know, onto the team. Um, and even if you don't, if you're not constantly like beating the drum of we're gonna win, here's where I see us in a year, you know, we're gonna grow this much and have all this great, you know, things happening and success, you know, human beings will sort of naturally drift toward the negative. So I think that's part of the job of a leader. I had a Founder will once say, I feel like my job is like chief reminder officer, just constantly saying the same thing again and again, you know, creating that vision for all your team members to kind of live into. So I think that's critical also for, you know, getting your team not to burn out, especially if they're working hard and under a lot of pressure.