How do you motivate yourself back from the doutful times?
One of the key traits about founders is being optimistic but despite this as founders there are bound to be moments during the journey where you must have felt a sense of doubt or pessimism about your product, a future plan or the decisions you have taken. How do you deal with pessimism phase to keep the ball rolling?
There is only one person whose voice and speech motivates me - http://jockopodcast.com
Even if I am not listening to the podcast, I can hear his voice in my head when the journey gets rough!
Jocko is the man. Only person I need to get me off my butt and taking action!
I don’t really go for a lot of the YC/PG stuff, but I find PG’s take on why startups “die” to be pretty movitating when the going gets tough: http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html
Don’t give up.
Thanks for the link, will be sure to read on it. Can't ignore PG's advice and tips :)
Pre-launch or post-launch?
During pre-launch phase, pessimism is quite destructive and my only solution is to work again and again until ready to launch, even if I as a boostrapper only complete 1 easy task a day.
I must admit I never finished some of my projects pre-launch because of thinking again about the possible number of users and concluding it was too low. I just moved on to the next idea.
Post-launch it's quite easier imo because you can compare your expectations with real data, correct, iterate. It's more real than pre-launch. Data often contain the truth about what you do every day. If the data tell you are going nowhere, you can try to improve for some weeks/months but you'll have to quit eventually.
Thanks and you nailed it. I believe most feel alot of pessimism pre-launch. Looking at the number of users, pricing,market and moving onto the next product might be a good thing but got to make sure it doesn't become a habit.
Yes doubt and fear come up often. I remind myself of three things.
First, I don't know what's going to happen until I launch. No one knows. So it's all made up. It's not real.
Second, fear and doubt are the great indicators that you must do the things you fear and doubt. Even if it fails or whatever you will grow just because you've went against the doubt.
Bonus about fear: Don't postpone it, don't give it time. It only grows with time, do it now. Launch sooner.
Extra bonus quote:
"Doubts kill more dreams than failure ever will"
Thanks. Funny you mention the quote, my wife got a t-shirt which had exactly the same quote haha.
I'm going through this at the moment. I feel like it's way too easy to fall in to negative ways of thinking about your product before putting it out there.
I think getting over that anxiety and launching something is really important, until you have real world feedback it's too easy to get trapped in your own negative thinking.
Welcome to the club James, Indie Hackers has been great for me. Gives me that extra boost to ship the product/service and then manage whatever comes my way.
May I know what you are working on?
I've been working on a tool I built for myself to manage software team retrospectives - sprintkit.io. Feeling it may be too much of a niche though so considering a pivot!
It helps me simply to know that EVERYBODY goes through this stuff. Beyond that I try to not be so hard on myself and allowing myself be okay with not feeling so confident. Then I like to download some bluegrass and go for a long walk in nature.
I am glad too that most people go through these moments, it's best to tackle it rather than not talk about it.
How do you not let yourself be hard on you? I have many moments where I am hard on myself and my wife clearly thinks so too. Any tips?
I face this reasonably often, and I try to see it as a healthy thing. It often comes when I see a wall of things that need to be done and I feel overwhelmed.
It's a message that I am not clear about the goal and the next steps and I need to tidy that up. I won't lie and say I am good with it and it makes me happy. Its just a wave that rolls in you need to deal with, to get to the other side. And its come and gone so often now that I don't freak out as much as I used to.
I like how you see the positive side of it and try to tackle it. Looking back at myself, I can certainly relate to the "not clear about the goal,next steps and tidying up" . It's probably the answer I have been looking for whenever I go through those moments.
May I ask how do you deal with these moments ?
Sure. First of all each person will need to find their way. For me I remind myself that Steve Jobs could deal with this. So it can be dealt with. Then I physically clean up my desk and my stuff and all the bits of paper and receipts. That always makes me feel better when its done. And it gets me into "get organised" mind.
Then I get a pen and paper and I make lists of what has to be done. Then I prioritise. I don't always do important first. If there are tasks that I have been avoiding, and make me feel dread. They go to the top of the list. Then I break it down into small tasks that I can do several of in a day. This involves making decisions and requires being realistic and practical. Then I get started.
Having the lists of stuff, helps me avoid finishing one task and wondering what to do next, which can kind of drift you back into darkness. The goals and steps are all sorted out. So now its action time. At the end of the day, you see your desk all clean, where you are going , and a list with several fresh new ticks. And you feel much better.
Cleaning up the desk certainly is the easiest and a key part towards the right direction.
I've also been thinking alot of continuous forward momentum lately. Doesn't have to be achieving alot everyday but rather keep taking the baby steps and keep the engine running.
Thanks alot Justin for the tips.