Dave Kashen explores how founders fuel ambition through meaning and future vision. Envisioning a negative future drives unproductive hard work and burnout, while healthy motivating imagery sustains energy and prevents exhaustion.
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.
