How to stay focused while working on your startup and having a 9 to 5
fernandopessagno.medium.com
fernandopessagno.medium.com
Examples: Walk to the subway, bus. Don't be in a hurry. When getting to the stop, take 3 or 4 minutes to chill and appreciate the sky, plants, whatever you have.
Wake up earlier so as not to be in a hurry. Eat satiably. Cook if you like. Cook a little more and take a packed lunch. Cook for loved ones. Take the stairs not the escalator. Read a book on the subway about something completely different than your 'jobs'. Listen to a quality podcast while doing morning stretching or abs.
Wish others a nice day. Being positive breeds positivity. Plan ahead minimising catch-up. Engage in office banter, do more. Always be the owner. Synergies happen in the funniest of places. Never feel guilty for reading around or into a subject more than's needed. Don't feel guilty for not knowing something. Give time generously. Take lots of breaks. Laugh vigorously when realising something was so simple. Take another break. Do not work a job that measures you on time. Drink plenty of water. Never forget what's most important for you.
For example, knowing a gas pipeline is shut down leading to temporarily high gas prices is useful if you are in logistics. However knowing that Intel just made a faster chip is not so useful. Similarly, the political stage of Belize is only useful if you have work or family that is impacts by that.
Just knowing it otherwise is only useful for fun conversations.
Society does foment a favorable environment for you to exist in without effort. And if it does, then you are lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and assume the favorable environment is temporary.
Really only at elections is when it seems important to me, do your research and go deeper than most and then make your choice, but avoid the news the rest of the time seems the optional thing to me.
You tend to hear about things anyway, everyone has an opinion on this thing and they love to share it, no matter how much they know about the topic, the best way to not get suckered in, is not to follow it at all.
I've in no way managed to apply this to my life yet though, but it is my goal.
Having said this, there are two areas that keep people attached to the news: a concern about become uninformed or being (or being perceived as) apathetic to the problems people face in the world.
Afraid of being uninformed? Read books on current topics.
Afraid of becoming apathetic? Donate to the non-profits that are positioned to do the most good in the areas of your concern.
Boom -- now you are informed and helpful while also undistracted and undisturbed by unhelpful, advertiser-driven news media.
I think a lot of people have to let go of the idea that they will somehow save the world. Embrace your insignificance. It's just as much a blessing as a curse.
My first girlfriend, after we broke up gave me a lifelong lesson. You can always control your attitude, more specifically. You can always control what you tell people. If you tell people about all these bad things that are going on all the time, they're just not going to want to be around you.
With my first girlfriend, had I just closed my mouth and kept these things to myself. And it was bad stuff, I was going through an eviction.
Maybe things would have worked out .
The other thing though, you just have to be grateful for right now.
To paraphrase
Thich Nhat Hanh
Fine piece with every step
[1] https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/10/travelogue-beauty-and-de...
Saying that, I agree that reminding _yourself_ of such things helps to keep a more healthy perspective, just not sure sharing that in a conversation is helpful.
Controlling one's attitude and tongue are excellent goals, and they usually pay great dividends.
It's probably worth mentioning that good mental health goes a long way in achieving those goals. Lack of sleep, high stress, drug addiction, etc. all make those things harder.
I just mention this so that people facing those headwinds don't add to their troubles by feeling guilty about things that (at the moment) are somewhat beyond their control.
It is highly unlikely that things would have worked out given your description. A healthy relationship is an honest one and sometimes life sucks and a supportive partner will help you through those times, and vice versa. Having said that, being constantly hyper-negative is also unhealthy and a relationship is unlikely to last if one only ever focuses on the negative side of things. If that describes you then that is something that a therapist can help you understand the address.
Either way, I am pleased you reflect on your past and try different techniques to avoid making the same mistakes. Personally, I just make different mistakes!
Another thing to be careful of is that we edit our pasts: getting reliable information on cause and effect is extremely difficult. We all create narratives that don’t exactly fit the facts. Not saying you did that, just to try and avoid making that mistake which is easy to see in others but hard to see in ourselves. Good luck.
There was no reason for me to tell her on a second date or whatever about all of my problems.
I was a stupid 19-year-old.
Now I know, you just don't need to tell everybody everything. Particularly when you don't know the person that well, it doesn't help them to know what you're going through.
It's all love though, after my first girlfriend dumped me I probably went out with like 3 or 4 other girls within a year or so.
Good, it shouldn’t be about blame, neither her nor you, it just wasn’t meant to be. I get the sense that you’d benefit from talking to a therapist about this if you aren’t already and have the means. Basically everyone benefits from talking through matters like this with a professional. Good luck!
I definitely have the income to afford it, but it hasn't been super effective so far. The money doesn't really matter, but I'm afraid I might just be wasting my time.
It can take a few tries to find the right therapist too. I encourage you to keep it up and see what happens.
I was mentally rolling my eyes at the parent post, because it seemed to have a lot of platitudes. Well, not platitudes per se, probably just good suggestions that get repeated a lot but rarely followed.
But the "Wish others a nice day." one stood out. It seems like great advice, and for some reason it just wasn't in my mental list of good ideas. So thanks!
And, I hope you have a good day!
The ancient Masters were profound and subtle. Their wisdom was unfathomable. There is no way to describe it; all we can describe is their appearance.
They were careful as someone crossing an iced-over stream. Alert as a warrior in enemy territory. Courteous as a guest. Fluid as melting ice. Shapable as a block of wood. Receptive as a valley. Clear as a glass of water.
Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?
The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment.. Not seeking, not expecting, she is present, and can welcome all things.
Fitter happier
More productive
Comfortable
Not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
At ease
Eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)
A patient, better driver
A safer car (baby smiling in back seat)
Sleeping well (no bad dreams)
The two extremes. Focus hard, but then have real downtime, slow time, stillness. Time to just let your mind and thoughts wonder, to relax, walk, meditate, listen to music, clean, just sit down and do nothing for a bit.
Cut out news and social media, cut out the noise, replace it with that kinda down time, real downtime, not this grey area that feels like relaxing but isn't, sometimes it feels like work and isn't too (like watching youtube, reading articles on productivity etc), this is the grey area.
Avoid as much grey activities as possible.
Either real work and real focus, or real downtime and stillness and as little of anything in-between as possible.
Well, I think that’s bullshit.
There’s nothing wrong with taking things slow, and working on your business on the side while you keep your day job.
Frankly, I should have realized this was the case when some moderately complex problems felt impossible (because I was giving the best hours of my day to my 9-5).
Sure but that’s a wide spectrum too. How profitable? Do you want to make $200/mo profit, $2,000/mo or $20,000/mo? You can do the first with a few hours a week. The second, maybe if you’re lucky or have a wide network you can sell to. The last one? I doubt it’s possible with anything less than 20-30 hours a week, at least upfront.
People think it’s all luck because they build things just hoping someone will buy it and when they don’t “ah well, bad luck on this one”.
Instead you need to find a problem people actually have first and then build something to solve that. Then its much more likely that someone will pay for that solution.
It is not luck when you hear several people say something like, “I really wish it was easier to do x” and then you build a solution that makes doing x easier.
It most certainly is luck if you just think of a random cool idea and it happens to be profitable.
I don’t get it insofar that the latter (your own goal, e.g. becoming a writer or your own business) has way more potential in the long run than the former.
In best case they can pair with a co-founder that has a good intuition about „good enough“ and handles all the chores. But then a co-founder also adds its own set of problems.
I guess that's the luxury of keeping your day job. If the product doesn't sell, oh well. Bills are still paid. Try again. If you're banking your entire livelihood on the product, you have to know there's at least some chance of success, even if it means alienating potential customers with bullshit
It breaks your heart? To spend all kinds of time building something, figuring out the best way to solve a problem, tweaking stuff, banging your head against a wall, all to announce it to the world and then? Crickets? (Source: been there.)
Put another, more bloodless way: opportunity cost?
Not to say you can't have fun making a product no one wants, but it's more fun to make a product that people want.
I hear what you are saying about landing pages lying, but if it says "coming soon" is that a lie (assuming you really plan to build it soon if the demand is there)?
I suppose I would never want to start a business with a product that I didn't at least get some intrinsic benefit out of building. Worst case scenario I learn new skills that can be applied to future endeavors. Besides, if you solve a problem and no one is willing to pay for it, well at least the problem got solved. Maybe that tool will be useful later in some other context.
Plus I don't like relationships built on sand. Fake-it-till-you-make-it is to business what steroids/doping are to athletics. Sure maybe it's necessary at the Cutthroat-Business-Olympics where everyone's doing it and you won't win if you don't, but most businesses aren't playing at that level, and do the equivalent of taking Lance-Armstrong-Style blood transfusions to win their local bike club's weekend race.
That's an interesting perspective. You aren't lying when you post "coming soon" originally but later it turns into a lie?
Frankly, not sure how you solve this chicken and egg problem in a way other than what we've already detailed:
* put the chicken first: build the product (at least as minimal of a product as you can). Invest your time.
* put the egg first: suss out demand (and don't build it if you can't find any). See if anyone will bite based on words, not product.
You can try to split the difference. By building a bit, using low code tools, for example, or by being transparent that you are thinking about building this and talking to potential customers about what they'd want.
I think that "coming soon" if you don't plan to build the product at all is a baldfaced lie; we can probably both agree that is bad.
Personally, I think that "coming soon" as a way to assess demand, especially if you send out a message saying "things changed, sorry I won't be building this" (not that I've ever gotten that kind of message) is not a lie. Things change all the time.
Have you ever left a job? Typically one doesn't say out and out "I'm leaving" until they submit a resignation letter. Is being part of the team and being enthusiastic about the company and product even if you are interviewing lying?
You can also lower the impact on your users during the "coming soon" phase by
* refunding their money if you charged them (this is a no brainer, hopefully everyone agrees with this)
* providing some additional resources (presumably you have some insight into the problem space you could share, even if you don't build the product) during the "coming soon" exploration process
* asking for emails rather than $$$ while you are unsure of delivering the end goal. You could ask for emails first and then $$$ later.
Being transparent would be something like Kickstarter/Indiegogo, where you have stated objectives and if those objectives aren't reached the thing doesn't happen, or happens to lesser degrees. I'm not sure how you would translate that into a market-research product page, as you'd need a way to positively spin the fact that the product doesn't actually exist yet. You're basically seeking funding more than marketing a product.
Emails would probably be the best happy middle ground. People sign up for news/info regarding a product that's under development, no promises are made, hell if you decide to start development you could even publish a dev blog documenting the experience and providing updates, depending on how technical your audience is.
I've just read so many startup-advice blogs that seem to recommend bait-and-switching the customer just to gauge interest. That seems counterproductive to me in the long run. Sure maybe the world is big enough for software that you can afford to screw over some people and there will be plenty more where they came from if demand is good. All I know is despite moving some distance away in recent years my family still goes to this one independent mechanic we discovered. He's gone out of his way to save us money when he could have screwed us (I requested repairs that were unnecessary), takes time to explain the repairs he's making and why, charges a decent rate (frankly I'd pay more if he asked) and hasn't broken anything. That's the kind of relationship I would want with my customers, and sure enough he gets every oil change from us despite being a 35 minute drive away.
The overhead of actually building the product is WAY more than just making a landing page.
Plus, knowing that there are people who are willing to give you money for a thing is very motivating.
Also, having pre-customers while you are building is a great way to know which parts of the product to focus on. The features you think are important may not be what your customers think.
Certainly there is a range of approaches in between vaporware and building in secret. But if you actually want to make money, you should start selling as soon as possible, even before it’s ready.
Granted you should establish hard criteria for an MVP and not try to make everything perfect, the temptation for feature creep as you further explore the problem space is real. But if I'm offering someone a shovel I at least want a competently built V1 of a shovel, not a pinky swear that I'll have an awesome shovel for them in 2 months.
Features are a little trickier. Whatever the customers say they want may or may not be what they actually want, depending on the specific context of course. Or the customers say they want X, but they aren't actually willing to pay for X. There's a lot of noise that looks like signal. You see it in startup blogs all the time "I thought customers wanted this, and they kinda did, but it was actually this other variant that we didn't discover until we analyzed data from the first year of sales" Rather than debate on what may or may not be on the other side of the hill, I'd land on the side of going and taking a look, even if that means some extra time/effort/money climbing said hill. You'll at least get a good workout and be stronger for it even if there's nothing of value on the other side. Meanwhile your day job covers the downside risk :)
I guess it comes down to your last line "if you actually want to make money". At what scale and to what end? Waiting to start selling until you have something to sell might technically be leaving money on the table, but if it makes enough money and results in a better overall product, and you have a more long-term outlook, can be worth it. Granted not every sector and objective is amenable to that strategy, but there are so many in this space who dismiss it outright as naive, as if business with physical products don't do it all the time.
I think people underestimate why running a startup is so time-consuming. Having real users with real business needs is like having a family with children. You don't take it easy when your kids hurt themselves or need help with homework. In the same way if a customer is having problems and needs a fix ASAP. In either case if it happens at 5am on Saturday morning you are on the hook to ensure it gets fixed--either do it yourself or roust out others to help, then make sure it gets done right, then make sure it does not happen again.
Over time you eliminate common problems. Moreover you can hire people to handle these issues so they don't bubble up all the time. But in the meantime there's no viable way other than putting in a lot of time.
p.s. Many startups are blessed with an offering that only needs 9-5 answers. I've never worked in one, though. It sounds really nice. ;)
And after a day of meetings, the VCs lean back on their chairs and scratch their head over the dismal state of their founders’ mental health…
This is to be distinguished from new businesses that do not intend to have rapid growth (even go beyond solo founder) and are in stable markets (used to be called small businesses). The OP seems to be running what I would call a small business which is not exactly a startup so why is he trying to tell us he is doing something special. For example, pretty sure I can make a case he is already working too much for his busines, maybe play guitar some weekdays, take some time off. There will be minimal impact to business.
> Run home at 5:30
Author mentions he's remote and don't have to commute which saves ~10 hours per week.
> cook dinner
If you are picking up kids today, could your partner cook dinner?
Living wise, for the six months leading Covid I had to be in the work office in Baltimore, which was 2 hours away from my home near Philadelphia, so I had a second apartment 10 mins from work/gym where I lived Monday – Thursday. This made it really easy to focus as there was nothing to do but work, exercise, eat, read and do email, talk to fiancee, go to bed, zoom at 7am. If anything, WFH starting in 2020 made it harder to focus. I also don't drink.
Relationship wise, the startup existed before my relationship and deeply influenced mate selection/compatibility.
Job wise I was an eng manager / product manager for an early stage cloud product which I shepherded from concept to post-revenue and early sales, it was not a soft FAANG job, it was intense but I was able to get everything done in 40 hours a week, near flawless delivery, never dropped a ball. Yes I am uniquely skilled/driven but most founders are, that's why you're doing it right? Burnout was not really an issue for me, probably because of deep belief and conviction in the startup and willingness to do "whatever it takes" to succeed. (We are succeeding, btw!).
Mental health wise, through Covid we all gained weight and I had some depression due to the relentless beating of corporate life. Hired a psychologist to help me process those frustrations and also work through my everyday failings as an entrepreneur (also normal). Eventually the startup made enough progress to raise some money and transition out of the job, but I think I could have sustained it indefinitely if that's what it took.
“Get paying customers, and take payment”
It’s not always possible but it is in most situations. A lot of (especially enterprise) customers are happy to front you money to build something they really need. Be up front about this.
The moment you do this, most other things with respect to prioritization + focus fall into place. YC says this often.
I then tried the 9-5 plus startup game after work, it's less stressing on the workload side(I can manage my startup time unlike the moonlighting where clients sometimes have deadlines), but the even bigger hassle now is interrupts from kids, it's impossible to stay focused when I'm at home due to that.
I respect anyone that has a few kids while having a 9-5 while somehow can take a startup off the ground.
For those who devoted to career without kids or even marriage, we're in a different world, and there is not much for apple to apple comparison.
On the other hand I have had the experience that I am much more focused when I have the time as it has become more precious in a way. My motivation to create something new that could potentially benefit my children is also much higher. Just have to be careful not to convert motivation to self-pressure. It can be a thin line sometimes.
Japan does not have the concept of "casual friends" or "light hearted friends" in the same way that places like the US have, but more similar to the way friends are viewed in the UK maybe, and friends take a lot of work and time to make.
In the middle of this is that most of your social life and work life are merged into one, which is different to countries like the UK and US, and you will be expected to work very long hours to show your love of the company.
Eventually you will burn out working 18 hr workdays, without breaks, vacations, family time, exercise and if you don't see much financial success at the end you will suffer a total disappointment with yourself and your life. That is if you are lucky enough to not run into health and financial issues before all this.
Besides the idea that working too hard automatically means success is just plain wrong. Money is not a linear function of effort. And real life success even in regular jobs depends on luck and things like office politics for the most part.
If anything working too hard will make your boss envious of you, and will work against your best interest. YMMV.
I usually wake up at about 6am. I check my email (I do personal support for the courses I run) and then spend 10-15 minutes glancing HN and a few sub-Reddits. That's usually enough time for me to finish drinking some water, all in all now it's about 6:30am. Then I go for a 60-90 minute walk. Then I'll make breakfast while eating at my desk while making about 45-60 minutes of progress on something. This could be planning out this week's video so that all I have to do is record it at a later time, work on some open source project or maybe my course platform. At this point it's close to 9am.
Also, sometimes I wake up at 6:30am and I'll walk for an hour instead of 90 minutes. Sometimes I still walk for an hour even if I wake up at 6am because it gives an extra 30 minutes to do something interesting.
Then it's close to 9am to start work, I work until 6pm with a 1 hour lunch break in between. Most of the time during that 1 hour break I'll go for a 30min walk and eat lunch. Rather than try to do something productive I use this time to idle. I never walk with podcasts going or listening to music, I just let my brain veg out. I'll also do basic exercise during this time like push ups, sit ups and I've started to jump rope now too.
After 6pm I'll make dinner and relax a bit. By 7pm I usually take another 30min walk, then shower. Then I spend about another hour or so trying to do something useful (progress on something, reading, etc.). Then I'll watch a movie from like 9pm to 11pm and goto sleep. My evenings vary. Sometimes I don't put in that extra hour and play video games instead. Sometimes I might decide to eat out with a friend but not really that often. I need more hobbies and I wish covid wasn't a thing anymore because I wouldn't mind doing other things in the evenings but a lot of it is indoors.
Needless to say I highly value unplugged walking time where I think about whatever pops up in my mind. It's hard to measure productivity but I'm sure I could probably spend half that amount of time and still get value of it but working 9-6 doesn't leave that much flexibility to break up the day much better.
This type of article is a little like a weight-loss program that tell you, in a roundabout way, that you just need to workout and eat healthy. All the advise is actually sound enough, but it's also something that most of us already know.
That said, us nerds probably shouldn't stop reproducing.
The intro to Idiocracy (2006) is quite relevant today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA
I heard Mike Judge on a podcast about a month ago (JRE) saying that the ability to make that intro was a large factor in his motivation of making the Idiocracy movie in the first place.
I think the “gene pool” phrase is not there to be taken literally…
Also, instead of investing in and maintaining relationship with said partner, reserve the post bedtime time for your SaaS
resentment, burnout and/or divorce is galactically more likely than startup success, so do be sure that you’re the exception.
Such a tendency to make excuses and say "well I am doing professional development as well" or "this is also a learning exercise" -- well maybe, but also, if you ever want an actual product to see the light of day, you eventually just need to live with the stack you chose and go for it.
My goal now isn't to use the latest cutting edge stack, and keep it updated to be even more bleeding edge.
My goal now is to have something that I can say is "legacy" and needs updates.
Finding time to build the thing hasn’t been all that hard. A few hours a week is actually a lot if you’ve already pre-solved some problems in your mind during downtime and you’re really just cranking out work with few blockers.
The hard part is customers. Acquiring them and keeping them can’t really be scheduled. This requires random bursts of time and energy when you least expect it that can be pretty incompatible with a normal job. Maybe if you’re really good at marketing and UX you can find ways to passively get self-service customers but most people who can build software lack those skills. And still, someone has to do customer support.
So I ended up with the classic hacker’s folly: a great product with few users. Oh well, I love building it.
You will most notably see it in your own social circle or family. People will put a spoke in your wheel in crucial moments or as soon as you want to take off. If you have not a strong will to move forward this will get you.
Even little and well-meant stuff like "you need a break", "you need sleep" or "you need a balanced life" are ways of them(and also yourself) to sabotage your efforts.
Depression is the result of lack of progress/purpose and not of too much work or lack of sleep. Therefore the best it to optimize always with the goal in mind.
Perhaps they're not trying to "sabotage your efforts", but instead, they are the ones who know you best and can see the effect overworking is having on you. It's amazing how much perspective shifts from the person in the thick of it to the observer.
> If you feel like you don’t have enough time, it’s probably because you’re not focusing on the right things.
> But if you feel like you’re starting to burn out, take it easy and unplug for a little while.
Unpopular opinion perhaps, but maybe you can't do it all? If you're working full-time and have any sort of family or personal life you can't do anything that's truly a start-up. This is OK. You can have a fun side project, you can even make money at it, but it ain't a start-up.
Ever since then I have not been able to focus. Everything is on fire, all the time. I envy the people who can tune out the world and pretend as if we are not living in a historic time, in the middle of a shift toward something very likely not good.
I can understand but its always been this way. Financial collapse in 2008 was probably more stressful for most people. 9/11 and wars in ME. Dotcom bubble. Gulf war. Crash of 87. Iron curtain coming down and dissolution of USSR. Economic upheaval of Reagan. 70s economic collapse, crime wave, Nixon/Watergate, war in Vietnam. Nuclear war threat. End of segregation in the 60s, WW2 etc etc
The only difference now is that we're more wired.
But then again, if you are a native-born, I can see how it's easy to have no idea about what is happening or where this is going.
How does that work?
Predicting an asteroid just uses some physics. It’s fairly deterministic.
You are predicting the outcome of fantastically complex systems - political, climatological, economic, social, technological … it’s not a good analogy because predicting the future on those dimensions has been historically next to impossible.
But even if I accepted your analogy:
What I’m saying is more like “there’s an asteroid headed straight for the earth. A bunch of people are working really hard to deal with it, blow it up, knock it off course, etc. Some are optimistic, some pessimistic. Regardless, if you aren’t part of that team, your role is to do YOU as best you can, and hope they are successful in fending off the apocalypse. Otherwise you create a 100% certainty of massive suffering in yourself and likely those around you as well. At best you fail to realize your personal potential. So it is basically a self fulfilling prophecy.”
If you're in the latter group, consider getting out of the 'news' pipelines for a few months.
Use no social media where 'news' appears. For example, if you use Reddit, don't look at the front page -- which is mostly outrage porn and shameless buzz marketing -- only select, bookmarked subreddits on other topics.
If outrage is being shoveled into your feed anywhere, disconnect the feed.
After a few months' break, to try to have sustainable civic/community engagement, carefully introduce an outlet that's trying to do real journalism in contrast to all the demagoguery. The tone can be concerned, but it must be objective rather than persuasive/manipulative, and maybe this combination of awareness and composure is reassuring. Maybe this is the NYT or WaPo still(?), or maybe you find something that works better for you. Check it maybe once a week or month. If you find a periodic summary that can update you in an hour, like a Week In Review, great.
Once you're not overwhelmed, and don't implicitly feel like it's all on you to save the world, then you can do some good. Maybe it's "think globally, act locally" in some niche, or maybe something else.
Then you can also carefully increase your news exposure, with a newfound awareness to when you're just getting worked over by an engagement/manipulation algorithm.
At the same time as you take a break, try not to overdo the distancing and accidentally become one of the people who need to pay more attention and care about things outside themselves.
You will never finish with a day job.
I work full time on a startup / 15 hours a day / 7 days a week , and still not have time.