Founder Anxiety - how do you deal with it?

Only one story -- I smoke weed, it helps me :)

I've recently come across this list and I think it's amazing:

"The BBC, in a recent large-scale experiment to increase the happiness and emotional well-being of a whole town, developed a happiness manifesto, much of which gives very simple and practical steps to increase your emotional well-being:

1 Get physical: Exercise for half an hour three times a week.

2 Count your blessings: At the end of each day, reflect on at least five things you’re grateful for.

3 Talk time: Have an hour-long uninterrupted conversation with your partner or closest friend each week.

4 Plant something: Even if it’s a window box or pot plant. Keep it alive!

5 Cut your TV viewing by half.

6 Smile at and/or say hello to a stranger: At least once each day.

7 Phone a friend: Make contact with at least one friend or relation you have not been in contact for a while and arrange to meet up.

8 Have a good laugh at least once a day.

9 Every day make sure you give yourself a treat: Take time to really enjoy this.

10 Daily kindness: Do an extra good turn for someone each day "

I'm a 100% believer in the exercise + sleep formula. I know it's super hard some days, but averaging 30 min of exercise per day and at LEAST 7 hours of sleep will do wonders for your morale. I also think having a family helps a lot for me, when it comes to dealing with the ups and downs of indie hacking life. Some days suck, but when I come home and start playing with my daughter I honestly forget about everything work-related for a few hours. It's a wonderful break. As @austenallred once mentioned on Twitter, having a kid makes life 10x harder but 100x better, haha.

Meditation helps a lot for me personally.

I have had so many founder anxiety experiences over the last years.

Every single time, the anxiety was a result of not hiring someone to share responsibilities and went away the moment I found, hired and trained someone to do the job that induced said anxiety.

I know that this is not always possible, so wherever delegating isn't possible, I have developed a few reframing methods that would allow me to see things that used to drive my anxiety as signs of success and triggers for happiness.

For example: A new error message gets delivered through our error tracking system. That used to freak me out, thinking the end of the world was near. I started reframing those emails in my mind as opportunities. "Here is a chance to make the product even more stable" instead of "oh no this could be the biggest problem yet". "We have solved all problems so far, this will only take a few hours at max" instead of "Oh no, this may be the problem that we can't solve".

Emotional reframing helps a lot here.

Oh this is a frequent thing for me, because I have the tendency to take nutty risks. I think I have a startup gambling problem lol. When I moved into indie products I dissolved my startup that was generating well over $20k MRR, because I felt it was distracting me from my dream and I didn't want a safety net to fall back on. I took a similar approach before founding that company, complete clean slate with uncertainty overload.

Anxiety is constant, but the thing that helps for me is a belief that as long as you put in the effort and sacrifice, things will work out eventually. So whenever I'm over stressed, I default back to my belief. I can only control how much effort I'm putting in, the rest will sort itself out.

Hi Rosie,

I've had anxiety since I founded my first company (an agency based in Barcelona). And it got worse when I had to close it and fire 20 employees.

Recently, I've been really intrigue by the new methods and how all these is handled. I learned tons about CBT and I start using positive affirmations in my day to day. Ended up using them for a billion things, not only anxiety and stress.

I just made a new app (it's still a bit in early stage, as I put it in prod yesterday) to help people with positive affirmations. Give it a try and let see if it can also help you.

Joan,

I spent two weeks in a remote forest where nature posed much more pressing concerns than what I'd been anxious about. It had a profound effect and after nearly two years, it still hasn't fully worn off.

I found that meditation, speficially transcendental meditation, allows me to stay focused, lowers my response to stress and clears my way of thinking to solve problems.

I run a meditation/relaxation app, and imo this might be biased, but meditation helps me get myself in control. Almost every morning, I take 30 minutes to sit quietly and self-meditate. @naval does this too. Try to focus on your mind/thoughts. Will be tough initially, and somewhat intense, but it helps take your mind off auto-pilot and puts you in control.

🎵 Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. 🎵

I think how you handle anxiety really depends on the source of the anxiety, and whether or not it's within your locus of control. Accepting that there are things out of your control, I find, helps me cope with them better.

This appears especially true at the micro level; for example, IdeaRoots mentions losing sleep over every user lost, etc. Appreciating that every individual person makes decisions based on a number of factors you can't possibly predict, and possibly has nothing to do with you in the first place, helps put things into perspective.

That said, anxiety is also just part of the game, and it can be energizing so long as it isn't all consuming!

Oh boy, when I started indie-hacking, every user lost/gained, every uptick in anything was disturbing my sleep, focus, decision making.

I have two thought-tools to handle anxiety:

1. If not this, would you prefer the alternative? Working for someone, on projects that likely won't interest you.
2. Creating something valuable is hard; anxiety is just a part of the process, embrace it & accommodate for it.

You will never get rid of anxiety. You can minimize it by creating a harder shell.