Ask IH: How do you keep going with indie hacking when things get hard in your personal life?

Someone very dear to me died earlier this year, back in Brazil. Traveling from Seattle to Brazil is very difficult and expensive. And I was busy building the business.

For a couple days, I didn't know what to do. So I missed the funeral and regretted it. That afternoon, I got plane tickets and flew to Brazil on the earliest flight possible. The connections were bad so it took me 39 hours to get to my destination.

But when I did, I could support my family in Brazil and they could support me. The pain of that sudden loss was too intense. It was paralyzing. I couldn't have made it without my close family.

I lost a week of work. And, honestly, that wasn't important. Seeking out the company and support of loved family and friends was the right thing to do.

You're going through a tough phase and it's very hard to do it alone. Please know that our community cares about you and we are here if you need us. Feel free to reach out privately, too.

❤

Went through the end of a 3-year relationship a few months back. Things got pretty bad, and I was depressed for a solid couple of months. Can't begin to imagine what the end of decade-long marriage feels like, so my heart goes out to you. I know it must be hard as nails every day. It's great that you realize (or at least suspect) that you're not alone in dealing with those kinds of feelings, but that doesn't necessarily make it any easier.

I can only speak from personal experience, so take all of this with a grain of salt, but here's what helped me:

• Talk to a professional. The right therapist is worth their weight in gold. (I didn't do this, but wish I had.)

• Talk to close personal friends and family members who won't find it annoying to hear you drone on and on every day… ideally people who'd expect you to do the same for them.

• Take time off. You need it and deserve it. If you try to force yourself to work more than you can, you're just going to fail to get things done and fail to take a break.

• Focus. You don't have a lot of gas in the tank, so you need to be ruthless in saying no to things that aren't 100% necessary. It's okay to be less reliable than you normally are. Give yourself a massive break here. In my case, I rescheduled a couple podcast episodes and stopped tweeting as much. I should've gone further and done things like canceled my upcoming talks, ignored more emails, etc.

• Spend time with people. Try not to be alone every day and night. Dating was really good for me, as was going to the office to work instead of working from home, spending more time hanging with friends, and even having coffee meetings with other indie hackers I'd never met before.

• Journaling was a mixed bag for me. On one hand, it helped me organize and process my thoughts. But on the flip side, it led to an almost obsessive amount of dwelling on painful events from the past, which was harmful for obvious reasons. That's the exact negative funk I needed to get out of, but I kept pulling myself back into it.

• The passage of time helps. Just realizing this might help keep you a bit more optimistic.

• Be compassionate with yourself. Even if your business doesn't work out, that's okay! I've had multiple businesses fail even when I was perfectly mentally healthy, as have many people far more successful than any of us.

Self-care is an essential element of your success in business and otherwise. Take the time you need to recharge, get adequate sleep, and, most importantly, reach out to friends and family to talk about how you're feeling. Sharing your feelings with loved ones will help relieve the stress and keep them in the loop about your wellbeing.

It's no shame to take a week off, even when Indie Hacking. You'll be amazed how your businesses run without you. You'll also find some areas you might be able to automate. Your mental health is more important than your business. No question.

Two things that I found useful, besides all the other great advice everyone else already wrote here:

1. Going back to the stoic philosophy principles - I only discovered stoicism a few years ago thanks to Ryan Holiday, but better late than never. When sh*t hits the fan (and I've had plenty of crazy lately), stoic guides help keep me sane, by focusing on what's under my control and trying to look on the bright side.

2. A book written by entrepreneur & investor Brad Feld together with his wife, Amy Batchelor, called 'Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur'. It's filled with practical advice for couples where at least one partner is an entrepreneur, and tips from other entrepreneurial couples. Both me and my partner are entrepreneurs, and Brad and Amy's insights helped me learn how to communicate what's going on inside my head. I also know a few business founders who saved their relationships (or at least their mental health) after reading this book.

Links to dig deeper:

• This guest post from Ryan Holiday published @ Tim Ferriss: 'Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs': https://tim.blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101-a-practical-guide-for-entrepreneurs/

• Another article from Ryan Holiday: '100 Things I Learned in 10 Years and 100 Reads of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations': https://ryanholiday.net/100-things-learned-10-years-100-reads-marcus-aureliuss-meditations/

• Ryan's books on stoicism: Daily Stoic, The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy: https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B007LUHFH8/

• The Daily Stoic: also from Ryan Holiday, a website with stoic related content, that also sends a great daily newsletter (and I swear I'm not getting paid by Ryan Holiday to write all these): https://dailystoic.com

• Marcus Aurelius' book, 'Meditations': https://dailystoic.com/meditations-marcus-aurelius/

• Startup Life book: https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Life-Surviving-Relationship-Entrepreneur-ebook/dp/B008SGNLWM

I went through a divorce. Its not going to be easy but you will get through it. The best advice I can give you is to take this time and focus on taking care of yourself mentally and physically. If you have kids there's truth to the saying "Take Care of Yourself Before You Take Care of Others." Build up some sort of support group, this can be friends, family, etc. Some days will be harder than others, reach out when you need help.

Start a hobby, get out of the house like a gym, sport, take the kids to the park, get a dog... think outside the box. You likely have a pattern if you've been married for 10 years, that pattern will now change so make sure they're good changes. There is a lot of happiness ahead, I promise you.

First of all, I'm sorry to hear that you are going through so much in your personal life right now. That cannot be helpful to compound on top of all the ups / downs of being an entrepreneur.

I bet you have high standards for yourself and your level of productivity / focus. But it seems like because of everything else going on, you are having trouble meeting those expectations?

What would happen if you lowered the bar for now while you get things sorted out? Instead of committing to work on your project for x hours per day, set a MUCH smaller goal to just do 1 hour a day.

Each and every time you do meet your goal, it'll help you feel a little bit more in control. And over a period of a week or a month, it'll also help you get the flywheel cranking again so you can get back into your project.

Best of luck man!

-Jonathan

Go hang out with friends.

Go do something your ex didn't like you doing.

Don't know exactly what your going through but, I went threw something similar and realized once the negativity was out of my life and I could do what I wanted, when I wanted to. My life was a lot better.

I was in very similar situation like you (9 years marriage). The best thing you can do is to give time for yourself. Everything else will sort out.

Hugs, seriously.

I have been there through a marriage ending with young kids and losing both my parents to cancer in their early 70's.

"Presentee-ism" doesn't work for indies. You can't just turn up to work.

I manage my mental, and physical health, with routines including exercise (tai chi, kung fu, weights, cycling) and meditation.

What I find hardest is just getting bogged down doing "research" rather than creative work or making progress on coding.

The only thing that has helped make progress in dark times is breaking stuff down into lots of smaller tasks.

When you have them out there on an issue tracker or other document, you will then find there are things you can defer that you hadn't realised. It is the only approach I know that works to be able to reduce the burden of work when you have so little mental and emotional capacity for it.

Listen, to brandon stanton (humans of new york) on tim ferriss podcast, the guy cries when explaining what he went through during the early times.

https://player.fm/series/the-tim-ferriss-show-1578275/brandon-stanton-the-story-of-humans-of-new-york-and-25m-fans?t=4459

I'm a freelancer and recently had to deal with "mental health issues", nothing serious but personal stumbling blocks which led to a real rough patch right for a while. I've been trying to find really simple easy things to do to become stronger, low hanging fruits if you will so here's what 's really helped for me:

Time's Magazine:

I came across Time's magazine for happiness. It's really good, covers a very broad spectrum of topics to get you started. I know this seems like weird advice, buy a magazine, but I found this very practical and useful. Much better than googling short articles. http://time.com/collection/guide-to-happiness/

Tony Robbins:

You might benefit from his series. I was sceptical about this and generally not someone into these type of things, but I have started listening to "Get the edge" and there's lots of gold nuggets in here. Stuff to make you feel positive and happy, how your body can control your emotions.

Therapy:

If you can afford it, find a good therapist, it really can help.

Good Friends:

This goes without saying, good friends and a strong social circle is key.

Exercise:

Cardio I find is really good.

Work where people are:

Don't work at home by yourself all the time, I work from Starbucks and libraries for a few hours per day now.

Meditation & Self Awareness:

This is a big one, covered everywhere but practice observing your thoughts when you feel down or stressed. Let things go, write it down and don't analyze. Breathing and body posture is key, it really helps you calm down the anxiety.

You're definitely not alone, I suspect that the majority of people on a week or month to month basis hit mental setbacks small to large all the time....but most don't really address them as much as they should. There's a real stigma against mental health.... I like the analogy that it's like building muscles, you need to practice to get better at it, to change the neuropathways and avoid the cycle of negative thinking.

hey there. I know how hard it can be to go through a rough patch. My dad was recently diagnosed with stage 3 cancer and the news came as a shock to all of us. First there's shock, maybe anger and frustration. Make no mistake, all of these emotions I was experiencing absolutely tore me up inside and made it hard to focus. I did the same thing you're now doing, which is to ask others how they've coped with such times.

I realize now that it wasn't so much the suggestions offered by others such as taking time off, focusing on health etc. that made the biggest impact to keeping my productivity. It was the mere knowledge and comfort I got from knowing that there are actual people out there in the world, strangers, who care and I can find solace with.

If you ever need to talk to anyone, don't hesitate to reach out to me. I'm on Twitter @jonleehl.

We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond.

My simple answer would be to read the stoics Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. They offer genuine wisdom into coping with troubling times.