Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient?

Writing is much like being a single founder. I find the single most important thing is to be aware of how motivated you are, and to adjust the work accordingly. If you try to work on hard stuff when you're low, you'll just procrastinate. But if you start working on easy stuff, getting something done will put you into a better mood, and you'll be able to move on to harder stuff.

Hemingway used to leave something easy unfinished in the evenings, so he had something to start with in the mornings. That works for me too, with both writing and hacking.

excellent point. I find that once I start working on a few easy tasks it actually improves my motivation.

Some example of easy tasks:

* document the code * add a couple more tests * write a quick shell script to automate some repetitive task

Yes, momentum is everything.

The Hemingway reference was a tasty infobyte, anyone else have a favorite 'inertia management tip'?

A trick I sometimes use is to leave something broken (or unfinished) when I quit working. It's easier to get back up to speed by picking up where I left off than by starting something new from zero.

The "Morning Pages" concept from "The Artist's Way at Work" http://www.amazon.com/dp/0688166350

Write three pages in longhand first thing in the morning every day. Can be stream of consciousness, a journal, a story, or even "I don't know what to write" over and over.

There are a number of good techniques in the book, but this is the best one to start with.

for me: start programing in the morning and don't check my email or any "leisure" websites (like hacker news) until after lunch. I've found that I only have about 5 hours of hard-core coding in me in a day, so I try to use that up in one block in the morning and work on non-coding B.S. afterwards...

I agree with pg: coding is like writing. I use the same strategies trying to stay productive as a coder that I did fighting writer's block while working as a technical writer...

managing a running server, on the other hand, is not like writing...

it's a %$#%ing nightmare ;-)

Being a single founder supporting a live website is not like writing. There's a lot more pressure once you launch.

This is a good way to stay productive--launch and you'll be forced to stay on your toes.

This is the single best advice in the thread. "Launch and you'll be forced to stay on your toes". This is what I did, and i'm finding it more and more difficult to procrastinate :-).

So, i'm by no means a master... but i have a few thoughts.

1. I've found recently that when i don't want to code, it's because i don't understand something. I've been picking up a pencil and paper and just working out things i'm nervous about a lot more often lately. it's been a nice productivity boost.

2. avoid crap that will piss you off to no good effect. I read reddit.politics from time to time and lose an hour just grumbling over some comment. huge waste of time.

3. i like running. i don't do it often enough... but a couple of miles will really turn down the volume on the rest of the world. very nearly a reset button for me.

4. by all means, stay up late and hack. However, for me, more than once a week is very detrimental. Sometimes, it's worth being a little slow the next day.

Running has always been a great reset for me. Emotional stress, job stress, and even in the worst of times I've managed to push a semi-psychotic break back by a couple weeks. Though running has never been a proactive solution for me, only after I've gotten to deep in the sledge do I lace up and kick it out.

#1 is key for me. Once I have the problem and course of action in mind, I can plug away easily. Otherwise I kind of flounder around, unless I purposefully focus on figuring out what I need to do next.

Also, I'd say 99% of advice is useless. People don't usually need to learn more effective ways of doing things. What they really lack is motivation and that's usually because they're trying to force themselves to do something they really think is pointless.

practicing a musical instrument also helps, similar to running...

As often as I can, I try to work on the thing that I'm most interested in doing at that very moment, even if it's not the most important. Experience has taught me that an hour on the wrong task is better than an hour wasted procrastinating the right one. Eventually my motivation will return to whatever it was that I should have been doing, and at least then there's not a pile of stuff that's accumulated.

As for frustration ... dancing. Seriously. I tend to go out dancing once a week and just shut off my brain, chat with my friends and forget about everything productive for a few hours. It just helps me reset.

> Eventually my motivation will return to whatever it was that I should have been doing

How do you do to keep a coherent direction, then? My problem is precisely this, and I am so driven by motivation that I end up doing a kind of Brownian motion, in retrospect... ;)

To state the obvious, the lack of motivation, feeling like shit and the ruminating you mention are common "symptoms" of depression or dysthymia or chronic sadness. Pessimism about one's future is another "symptom".

I struggled with chronic sadness most of my adult life, and tried many things to get rid of it. For example, I tried about 9 different prescription antidepressant drugs. The best cure for me is to have face-to-face interaction with someone early in the day. 2 hours of f2f interaction in day seems to energize me more than 1 hour, but 1 hour is enough to keep most of the sadness away. The energizing effect seems to manifest the day _after_ the "face time". This works very well for me: much better for example than any of the prescription drugs. I got this idea from http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/facedepress.

(That page and the others I read about this "face cure" say that watching video of faces works just as well as f2f interaction: I have not tried that yet.)

By the way, this antidepressant effect of face-to-face interaction is one reason I want a cofounder or two.

Good luck, and feel free to contact me privately if you have a followup question.

One last thought: Just about every night when I'm about to fall asleep, I'll notice the logical inconsistency of my own thoughts and think something to the effect of "Wait, what exactly do kangaroos have to do with zeppelin pilots anyway? Oh, awesome, I must be about to fall asleep. Freakin' finally. ZZZZZ..."

I'd love to be able to do this more when fully awake. Sometimes I can -- I'll realize the influence of my emotions on my thoughts when considering them. But not as often as I'd like.

I liken it to a kind of metacognitive exception-throwing. Have you guys found ways to put a few more asserts() in your thought process?

I have noticed this "inconsistency" before falling asleep too. Does anybody have any idea why it happens?

I have this happen very regularly.

My guess is that the brain is trying new combinations, so that if you hit a new idea during the day, it will get reinforced (you get "excited"). So the brain "shuffles" stuff during the night (dreams) and during the day selects. It is like evolutionary modification of behavior, in a way.

But to do it, you have to reinforce a little the nonsensical stuff for a while (and at speed). This semi-conscious state in which there are inconsistencies is "pre"-dream, in which almost everything is quite nonsensical, but it kind of "makes sense", so it gets reinforced a bit. The interesting thing is that this is done in parallel, so what you remember about a dream is like a small part of what your cortex was "thinking", a massive recombination of ideas.

Well, I could go on and on with my speculations... ;)

This is interesting speculation, but also curious is how it happens whenever I get drowsy, which includes the drowsiness following a heavy meal. So either the brain capitalizes on the signals of the body ready to go to sleep, then it immediately starts reorganizing memories, or the body tries to go to sleep once the brain starts to reorganize memories; or, since sleep is regulated in part by hormones, the hormone production precedes both the brain and body... haha, the more I think about it the less I think I know. If it is hormonal then, perhaps certain foods could induce the behavior more strongly than others?

what exactly do kangaroos have to do with zeppelin pilots anyway

Hilarious. The strange thing to me is, while you are in this state, the connection makes perfect sense. It's only when you snap out does it become inconsistent. Maybe it has to do with certain portions of the brain relaxing before others.

What you describe is more like my experience when half-awoken in the middle of the night. That's when I'll hold adamantly to some complete bit of nonsense ("Really, this does make sense!") while my wife smiles and nods and tries to get me to turn over and go back to sleep. I often remember the event afterward and can't think why I thought I was making sense.

In contrast, when I'm falling asleep (and I assumed this was more what the parent was talking about) I'll suddenly realize that there have been one or several strands of nonsense running in my head for what seems like some time. Sometimes the strands seemed like reasonable trains of thought until I attended to them, sometimes they're just imagined dialog of other people (experienced as mentally overheard instead of consciously imagined) or something else.

But to become aware of them (and to be aware of them as nonsense) in the falling asleep case isn't to snap out of the state. The state continues often until I'm asleep, and a kind of metacognition appears over it with the realization that my thoughts don't make any sense and drawing the conclusion that I'm in the process of falling asleep. Except the original state is probably better described as semi- or sub-cognition.

It's nice to know a couple other people have similar experiences.

I'm not aware of any connection in myself between throwing an exception when almost asleep and being mindful of my emotional state and its effects while awake. (Except perhaps the correlation that I'm more mindful generally now than a few years ago, and the going-to-sleep thing might be a last-couple-years phenomenon. I don't remember it for sure before then.)

I do find that using programming metaphors (e.g., throwing an exception) for my mental processes is almost always misleading.

I think this metacognition is starting to bleed over into my dreams:( or :)

Also, I don't think it is just nonsense. These strange thoughts seem to have two levels to them. The more syntactic level, i.e. being part of a video game and fighting giants doesn't make any sense. But, it is the intuitive meaning behind these images that does make sense.

So, my theory is that I'm not necessarily thinking nonsense, but thinking on a different level. A level switch causes that meta-cognition of "nonsense" to occur.

This is similar to reading good literature. Often, great books make use of complex imagery that doesn't make much literal sense. But, focussing on the intuitive impressions that the images bring seems to convey some kind of deeper meaning.

A couple of times while I was in that state, the "pre sleep state" I was convinced that I discovered a way to fly while flapping my arms, it felt so real and was 100% convinced it would work. I was so happy... the next day I couldn't remember the "arm flapping formula". yes, it felt that real at the time.

Reminds me of a zen method. As you're waiting to fall asleep you slowly count up. Each time you get to five, go back to one. If you're lucky you might remember catching yourself at 6 or 12 a couple times, but usually your just out!

(It takes a little practice.)

A little glossolalia will fork your language processing and symbolic thought, and help turn the volume down on the pesky internal monologue.

Listen to this episode of Radio Lab - http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/05/25 - it talks how, in our dreams, we start to do free association of events that have occurred during the day to make sense of them. Pretty interesting stuff.

intelligence is famously hard to define but I think a big chunk of it is associating ideas. most people have set pathways, x associates with y and so on. the more intelligent cross-reference more things. while you are asleep your brain plays with associations.

I would bet that someone who didn't dream would do substantially worse on cognitive tests of all sorts.

The less sleep I have the more narrow minded I become.

I've had dreams where I was in my room and it was completely realistic, but for some minor detail, such as a digital clock reading " 4:63 am". Often, I will notice the impossibility, even "consciously" within the context of the dream, and then I wake up.

You might consider getting a co-founder. It's likely your moods will be out of phase, so that when one is down the other can be the motivating force and vice versa.

Also accept the fact that doing a startup is an emotional roller coaster - one day you will believe you are about to take over the world, the next you will wonder why you are wasting your time. Just accept these short term variations and focus on building a great product :)

As many people have said, exercise is key. Besides just clearing my mind, I find that going for a run or a bike ride actually helps me focus on what I need to be working on when I get home.

My #2 problem after procrastination is prioritizing what I should be working on. Whenever I go for a bike ride for a few hours, I have a lot of time to think about the direction of my project, which really helps me focus and get right to work when I'm home.

Also, a girlfriend helps, or at least set aside time for dating. Balance is key, or you'll burn out quick.

I'm most productive when I'm training for a marathon. Amazingly when you spend 2 hours running, you end up with more time in the day. I don't know how it works either, but it does.

Martial arts training is good, too. Classes are at a specific time (which can be good and bad) and it's much more social (which is almost entirely good).

Maybe you're running against the rotation of the Earth, thereby causing you to go back in time. It worked for Superman.

No, even if I was Super-fast it would do no good, as I run a Hamiltonian cycle.

Ze Frank made an interesting comment related to this: http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/12/121906.html

I have two points to make here:

1. Your general mood - I don't think you can control it and so you might be better off going along with it rather than trying to fight it. I also work on my stuff part time, and many days I sit down with the intention of doing something and I realize that I just can't do a damned thing. Forcing yourself to do stuff at this point is likely to make you unhappy and produce no code, so it's kinda useless.

I don't know about you, but I don't know when exactly I am in the good/bad mood, so I sit down and try to get some work done. Some nights I end up working 6+hrs straight into the wee hours and other nights I close down the editor and play CS or watch TV.

2. When you're working on new stuff sometimes its hard to get started since there may be several ways to do it, and they all seem equally valid. Instead of trying to plan out too much, just start implementing one of them. Even if you chose wrongly (you can reverse it later), it'll both motivate you to work further and give you a much better idea of what it is that you actually want/need to do.

I tend to do a good amount this kind of programming and it works out well in the end (if I compare some of earlier check-ins for my current project with the latest ones, there'll be very very little in common)

As awesome as the Hacker's Diet is (I use EMA weight chart to keep track of my weight), I don't think you'll find something quite like that for emotions ;)

Regarding 2:

I struggle with this all the time - I always start working on something one way but as soon as I come to a realization that there may be a problem with the one, I switch to the other way. It leads to a lot of thrashing.

This is never a good approach, fully implement one way and make it easy to swap at a later point and document problems.

On dieting...

I've always had a problem with weight. After extensive research, I tried the Hacker's Diet and lost 60 pounds over 7 months. The big problem with HD is that it doesn't emphasize increasing your protein intake. As a result, I lost some muscle mass as well as fat. I kept the weight off for two years but eventually gained most of it back. Another criticism of HD is that you lose your energy--had I been working at the time I couldn't have pulled it off.

I'm currently doing a medically supervised diet called a Modified Fast which does emphasize increasing protein and virtually eliminating carbs. One of my board members recommended the clinic and they claim they can do 15-20 pounds a month with no muscle loss or decrease in energy. I'm ahead of schedule but I'm only a couple days in so it doesn't really count. (The first 10 lbs are water weight.) I also take an appetite suppressant called phentermine during both diets.

Here's the Wikipedia link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet) for something similar to my current diet. They call it the Ketogenic Diet. (The whole point is to kick your body into a state of ketosis where it rapidly burns off all your fat. The protein is to make sure it doesn't also burn off muscle.)

there is no healthy way to lose weight fast. period. it is stressful on your body. the way to lose weight is to change your habits so that over time your body can accustom itself to new conditions.

I rarely get pissed off at other people; for me that's usually a sign that I'm insecure about something and unwilling to admit it. But I do get tired and unmotivated now and then.

When I catch myself procrastinating, I just say "OK, I'm going to procrastinate for the next 30-60 minutes". Then I set the timer and goof off without guilt. When the timer rings, I go back to work.

Minimal exercise is really important: some stretches/calisthenics in the morning, occasionally pushups or pull-ups as 5-minute breaks.

My social life is limited, but I see my girlfriend every day and that helps a lot.

Not working on the same problem for all hours of the day usually helps. For example, instead of spending all day coding, break up the day by swapping your focus to an entirely different aspect of your startup, like finding potential customers or planning your pitch to a top blogger. Coding in the morning, strategy in the afternoon...and both should be done while drinking as much water as possible.

If you can't bring yourself to focus on a different part of your startup, write down exactly what is causing you to be angry (let's be honest - it's usually something to do with the code you've written) and list the possible solutions underneath it. Choose the best solution on gut instinct, and move on asap. Too much thinking is bad.

p.s. I'm really, really glad to have come across this post; I now know other people are experiencing the same ridiculous mental state!

This is very nice, sensitive post. I've got lots of coping mechanisms, and I've worked alone a long time. Don't be alone unless you want to be.

If you are looking for a sustainable solution to competing and coping in the world, it is to find a good team. It might be some one just like you, or some one who seems opposite.

Low hanging fruit so there is measurable progress, a clear plan so there are attainable goals, and a team to share the journey.

Motivation is tricky so here's what works for me:

1. I have a short paragraph that I wrote telling myself why certain things are important to me and my eventual goal.I read it whenever I'm feeling down.

2. I always have a 4 item to do list. Why 4? It just works for me. It's short enough to accomplish and long enough to feel I actually got something done. Doesn't mean once you accomplished all 4 you have to stop, anything extra would just be bonus.

3. Turn into a morning person. It has dramatically improved my productivity. Rising early gives me plenty of energy and keeps me mentally fit.

having an online audience that gives feedback is motivating. even better if your friends (cheerleaders!) are your first users and constantly give you reallife feedback.

if you don't have cheerleaders, try to find some. even better, find projects you can cheerlead for too. starting stuff without an audience gets depressing real fast. if someone takes notice of what you're doing it's a lot harder to bury yourself if things get tough.

it's all about building structures that force you to succeed. put yourself on rails, and make sure it's really hard not to stay on course.

Exercise helps.

Music I like can also help me focus when I'm procrastinating too much.

There are times when I'm at an energy/focus low, and can't get anything done, which just lowers my energy/focus more, which can lead to a downward spiral. If I can push through it and get something done, that might pick me up, but more often it's a signal that I need to take a break and get off the computer (things like reddit or stumbleupon don't count as a break, they just turn my brain into mush).

Several years ago, I discovered a way to manage my emotional state as a byproduct of something else I was trying to do - relearn Russian for an overseas project. I had read in several places that you can 'replasticize' your brain for learning by doing neurofeedback and sought out a local practitioner.

He stuck tiny gold sensors on my head with a conductive paste and hooked me up to his PC and told me to 'make the beeps come'. I laid back and tried to clear my head and think of nothing. Every once in a while I'd hear a beep and then I'd _try_ to do the same thing and no beeps would come. After a few times, my mind would wander and one day I thought about when I was playing with a puppy earlier and I smiled to myself and suddenly there were lots of beeps.

Between weekly sessions, I'd practice for 20 minutes daily. Did it help my Russian? Maybe, I really don't have a way of getting the data for it. I think it might have, but also being in daily email correspondence with a real live Russian and having my livelihood dependent on writing in Russian contributed as well.

One of the things I noticed was that on days that I 'meditated', things magically got done with a lot less resistance and internal drama and that I was far more productive. How much more? Well, in true Hacker's diet tradition, I made a spreadsheet and tracked it. While I didn't have a numeric scale, and therefore couldn't apply a weighted moving average, I was able to look at the todo lists and see what kinds of things got crossed off and what didn't and make a qualitative evaluation that I got about twice as much done on days where I laid down and connected with my inner puppy in the morning. This is after tracking for three months. It was obvious that it was beneficial before I started tracking, but I was very curious as to how beneficial and the three months tracked over two different kinds of projects - one creative and one analytical. I think the meditation also helped the transition between the two - which usually takes some time if I'm changing disciplines.

I explored several other forms of meditation and eventually had success with the thinking of nothing for twenty minutes. There was one with counting to ten over and over that felt like training wheels and I didn't like. I kept coming back to that puppy and found that it was the most effective.

This is a fascinating question and one that I'll follow. I'm very glad you asked it.

I have, like everyone else in here, experienced the same thing. I certainly go through periods of lesser motivation.

Things that I find help me get through it: A) Momentum. Once I get started I don't stop for as long as possible, including working late into the night. Sometimes momentum can carry through to the next day if you maintain focus.

B) Deadlines and dependancies. I just wrote a project for my brother in about a week of my spare time. If that was a personal project, it would have taken a month of time. I had someone else relying on me, and had a ridiculously tight deadline, and it pushed me to ignore all problems and just do it.

C) Mental health. It is an issue we ignore - almost everyone has discussed physical activity, and I believe this is certainly important in mental health - but not many people suggest focusing on the mind. There are many things you can do to temporarily improve mental health, like travel, meet new people, exercise, etc; improving mental health fundamentally is very difficult. I won't go into too many details, but essentially you need to understand yourself, your passions and desires, your faults to really know why you act in certain ways.

All that being said, I suffer the same issues on a regular basis.

I highly recommend meditation. I have a steady practice of sitting for 20-30 minutes every day at around the same time, and find that it helps a lot with the various problems you've discussed. It feels great to have small period of time each day to work on steadying the mind and all its incessant thought loops.

Meditation is obviously not a panacea, and doesn't give much in the way of immediate results -- which unfortunately makes it easy to abandon. But after sticking with it for a while, I think you'll find that you'll have fewer emotional peaks and valleys, and will therefore be a bit more productive (amongst other things).

I'm glad you had some good luck with the Hacker's Diet. I too have been following the methods in that book for a couple years now, and have steadily lost a good amount of weight. I think the main thing that I took away from it was how important awareness is. Just recording my weight each day and plotting a moving average gave some insight that I never previously would have considered. And I think the same is true for meditation. You'd be surprised what new kinds of awareness about your own emotional state arises when you are just sitting with nothing but your mind.

I have started waking a few hours earlier to work before going to my full time job and putting in less time in the evenings. A day at my full time job seems to drain my motivation sometimes. Also, often a problem that has me stuck in the evening is solved the following morning on waking. I changed my work pattern after noticing this.

I find I work more consistently on a day if I have exercised on that day; a jog, or maybe a session of pilates or something. Often I will work quite well in the morning when I know I am going to go for a run at lunch time, so it seems to benefit me both before and after strangely enough.

take up some form of martial art as a hobby. i suggest this because it involves a lot of important aspects that you won't get as a full-time solo hacker: gets you physically fit, helps to relieve stress, gets you to clear your mind and focus on something different for a while, and puts you in a social environment away from a computer.

Somehow surprised, it seems a lot of us are solo founders. Nice bunch of good solutions, I see.

Max

I clean my desk and make it clutter free. I tend to accumulate everything from printouts to coffee cups over time.

I have worked on my startup for over a year. I hired someone in India as my developer as I did/do the web design and business stuff....

Through my experience and something I recommend all startuppers have is a thick skin and a crazy, insane drive! If little things piss you off now, how would you handle negative comments made about the work you have slaved over? The negative actually should be viewed as constructive criticism, though also learn to decipher the vicious with the constructive!

When I want to get away from my work I will go and hang out with friends.

In my experience, emotional pain is as much a signal as physical pain - great you are paying attention. Research shows that sleep is an important factor in mood and overall productivity - so don't skimp on that. It also shows that friendship and social interaction is important to mood - in fact, talking about issues/being heard prevents ruminating. And, taking breaks is very important for creativity. Your emotions may be messaging a need to be a bit nicer to yourself. We all relate - hope that helps.

If i had to pick one thing, I'd say to keep promises to yourself. Being aware of the fact that you might, say, procrastinate is huge. So, make a promise to yourself that you will follow your clear defn, etc and code for 10 minutes or whatever you can to get yourself going. Then, once you get going you're 90% of the way there. But again, keep those promises and you'll build momentum and self esteem which will drive you forward.

"The Calm Technique" by Paul Wilson is an excellent beginner's guide to meditation.

Meditation, for programmers, is like circuit training for athletes. It's the time you put in to train and build strength in you mind itself - not knowledge of the game, not skills in the craft - but actually building and maintaining the structure of the mind itself. For whatever reason, it tends to help stabilize emotions too.

I have the same problem, but what gets me through is, when I am in a good flow, i try and not break focus for many hours, PG mentions in one of his essays how long hacking sessions work really well. So I try to get up early and work non stop for as many hours as I can, I find I am most fresh and productive before I get in contact with the "outside world".

I've found this too. Lately this week, I've been getting up several hours before I have to go to work and spend some time hacking on my own stuff. I think this is a more reliable way to keep that time free.

Maybe the emotions come for a purpose. I think they try to wake you up into realizing that you're not a 100% efficient coding/working machine and if you expect yourself to go to work and then work on your business (as I understood by your reference to "your spare hours" and to "(emotional) problems"), you're trapped by your own expectations. Maybe doing the emotion track for at least a couple of days a week would be a good thing.

I sometimes don't get anything done, sometimes I get so much done. I've myself just learned to not expect much when I'm not in the flow and lacking the motivation and gut feeling to actually do the work I want to do. Things come, things go -- maybe I'll learn the following day that what I tried to do was eventually not needed. Or the following day might bring me the energy to start working on it, if it's the right thing to do at the time. If I tried to just execute through every single day, I'd be saturated with frustration by now.

To get myself into my code I usually have to remove all distractions, including the internet. Either unplug, block specific sites with your hosts file or use 8aweek.

When I have your problem I usually wish I were coding, but its easier (and seems quick) to check facebook, twitter etc.

Remove all of those distractions and a computer actually feels really productive.

"so I wish there were tons more written like this one"

i've been thinking about this. the best thing about engineers is that we have very low tolerance for bullshit. every time I've seen an engineer apply himself to a problem outside of engineering you wind up with a very nice, no bullshit, stripped down explanation of said problem.

You don't. Seriously, I strongly recommend against it. I tried. After about 18 mo. I finally broke down and brought in someone I really liked as the CEO and it's a world of difference.

I would never again try to do a startup the sole founder.

Fundamentally: be conscious of your mood and the things that affect it, and work with your mood rather than against it.

The suggestions here are good examples of this philosophy. I would add: don't try to change your mood by force of will alone.

I do 2 hours of surfing everyday (10km of running every 2 days in case of flat days), and I don't think it helps much on the morale side. So I force myself to work even if it's slowly and in bad mood, it's better than nothing.

Don't try to fight the stuff head on. Recognize when you aren't going to be productive in front of the computer, and walk away. Figure out something else to do, ideally something that gets you in a better mood, or feeling more productive, or helps clean away all the things you're worrying about. Sometimes that means cleaning the house or running some errands. Sometimes it means playing a couple hours of Halo 3 with your friends. Often for me, a trip to the gym will do wonders. After my post-workout shower, I feel like I'm restarting the day.

I would also ponder the possibility of dopamine/serotonin levels and the like. For some people, it makes a difference, whence it becomes less of something you try to deal with, but something you live with.

similar to programming is martial arts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi#First_duel "If you try to wield the long sword quickly you will mistake the Way. To wield the long sword well you must wield it calmly. stage1: only when happy are you calm. Feel the force, Luke SkyWalker. stage2: calm at all times, whether angry or drowsy stage3: minimizing emotion; just aa game stage4: harnessing emotion; Music Composers write when they are in love stage5: emotional and concentration peaks bio-rhythym.

many car accidents from Americans driving drowsy, inattentive. ADD? writing boring, routine, same old, same old code? are you driving drowsy?

Why is tennis champion champion? Because only on the 'critical match point' shots he wins. Difference in percentage between loser and BIG winnner is very small. 270 baseball batter and 320 batter difference is 50 points. 1/4 second - OLympic gold medal swimmer.

a possible good way (controversial) introduce the competitor's star team of programmers and comedy writers to 'fashion models', 'drama queens', inject an overload of emotion.

Can you concentrate on writing critical code after have your face slapped by a girl friend or even her friend?

"Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay." -- Eric Hoffer

>How do you avoid ruminating on things in your day that have pissed you off? This is my biggest issue.

Try Buddhism. Most of the things you ruminate on are probably worthless, and a religion may help you to see that better and earlier.

On the other hand, it may develop qualities in you that are not favourable for an entrepreneur.

Zen would be a much better suggestion. More focused, and less religious. You can be as easely zen atheist or zen christian as zen buddhist.

Actually, Zen is simply one path to Buddhism. You have to check out the sects so you don't get into one you consider strange, but, for instance, vipassana is another path that (as far as I know) doesn't make claims to worshipping deities. Steve Hagen writes well on this, as does Gunaratana.

Remember, the Buddha was agnostic. He simply gave advice. Follow it if it works for you. Buddhism doesn't address faith, but reality.

Both this and the parent comment strike me as very much a Western and modern spin on Buddhism. It's one I happen to be sympathetic to. But I'm also skeptical of what happens when such traditions are taken far out of their historical and cultural context.

This is a great comment. I read folks I think are grounded in both contexts--modern and historical. Try "What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula for background.

Speaking of modern variants, did you ever run across "After the Absolute" by David Gold? It's about the author's experiences with a hillbilly Zen teacher from the back woods of West Virginia. There's no historical connection to Buddhism (or even Zen for that matter) but it's a vivid story. The guy in question was a volatile character who half the time would share profound spiritual insights and the other half would pull a gun on you.

Sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.

Of course it's modern and western, but not less useful. As for classical buddhism, as far as I got into it it's an ok religion, but just as full of myths and dogma as the orthodox christianity I was born in. I much prefer the modern version. Although after a little sorting I suspect I'd be very interested in a lot of old texts by Dogen and such - something that probably isn't true with christianity.

Actually, my boyfriend turned me onto Buddhism. He grew up with it - he's from Sri Lanka. He meditates every day, so much so that when he went to SF and they wired him up with the electrodes, his brain waves were really different.

He's no wimp - He's a VP of a public tech company. He says it clears his mind, helps him make balanced decisions, and navigate company politics. Judgment is one of the most difficult parts of being an entrepreneur - so that anything that helps that could be positive.

Go for a swim or read some story about some successful entrepreneur who had been through this phase.

whooooooooooo nice replies cant read them all :) ...

anyhow, as as engineer I understand what you are talking about. I have same problems.

#1 Solution ( that works for me ) : HAVE SOME FREE TIME for yourself. I do this my simply getting up early ( some days around 5:00am ), then do great training ( walk, running, martial arts, swimming, dog walk...). Then healthy breakfast and you are ready to go, energy for all day. Good sleep, friends ( NO WAY TO DEVELOP WITHOUT FAMILY&FRIENDS ), and important thing is to RELAX sometimes.. Daily spend min 45mins in nature and always remember to look at the sky&stars&moon...

And don't waste time on PC. Get the work done and simply fuck off from it :) forget the games, the movies, the web..

all you need is love ^_^

I enjoy watching a good movie to get me in the mood. Rocky or Rudy usually does the trick.

Extreme sports is very useful here. A couple of hours ride around the city on in-line skates usually solves all my emotional problems. If that does not help, I switch skates to my SUV and go to mountains for snowboarding :-).

Lately I just go through my emails and find requests and do them. I would like to do a big project but sometimes making incremental improvements at least moves you forward when otherwise you might not do anything.

What separates the boys from the men is:

Take a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), Break it up into small reusable pieces and accomplish over a long period of time making measurable progress every day. Easier said than done.

do something outside

step away from the keyboard

meet girls get laid

i agree. close the macbook.

meet girls.

don't forget to bring your iphone for your date though!

Eat, drink, exercise and sleep correctly. Have a routine. These will help a lot.

i use twitter to rant when i'm in a bad mood. cycling helps. but what helps the most is when your users talk back to you and you figure out ways to improve your product/service.

daft punk

1 - Keep a sporty life. Exercise releases endorphines -pleasure hormones- , refreshes your mind, and fine-tunes your vascular system.

2 - If you have a girlfriend/boyfriend, you not only have someone to talk to and bounce ideas to, but also someone to synchronize with. It will help split your day into large chunks, erasing away long hours of slipping through half dozing over a keyboard.

3 - Make sure to get a few minutes of sunlight straight to your face every day. Keeps your internal clocks in synch, and refreshes you.

4 - Wake up early, even if you go to sleep again at midmorning. The dawn fresh air also resets your internal clocks.

5 - When in doubt, stand up and go for a walk/exercise/house-cleaning frenzy etc. Remaining doubtful in front of the keyboard is not constructive. Accomplishing small tasks will tune up your mood as well.

> a great online book called "The Hacker's Diet"

It's a lot more complicated than calories in, calories out. Nutrition is a complex topic involving the interplay between nutrients and the endocrine system and sleep, and differing kinds of exercise. If he just said "Eat less, exercise more" then he'd be right. But everything else he says is wrongheaded.

> I wish there were tons more written like this one, but on other topics

There are way too many books like this. Some intelligent guy blathers on about a complex subject of which he doesn't really know much.

Your not a machine. Hacking is hard, it taxes us like not many other jobs. I read here a long post about sleep problems, hackers get all excited whenever the sleep topic comes up (seems many suffer). The point is hacking too late into the night can upset my sleep, thus starting a vicious cycle. I'd suggest stepping back, don't push too hard, if your working during the day then maybe hack for yourself at the weekends of for only 1.30 a day.

> How do you guys deal with emotional problems?

I'll smack you in the face and scream at you to "Pull it together man!" Or would you prefer a hug?

> What kind of non-computer things can you readily do to get away from it?

Sports are important. NOT going on runs, or "working out", or bike rides, or a friendly co-ed softball league. Men need physical athletic competition. Personally, nothing puts me on an even keel more than getting punched in the face. Real adrenaline rushes put all stress in perspective.

I agree. I always used to play fight with my friends when younger, and I've always enjoyed combative sports like wrestling and martial arts. I like having a fighting spirit!