The impact of stubborn optimism (burnout part 3)
The start of the pandemic and how it threw a big wrench in my plans
Last week I wrote about my move to the Netherlands, the link between idealism and burnout, and the stages of burnout. This week the journey continues as I recount the start of the lockdown and the steps leading up to burnout.
1/ Sh*t hits the fan
My wife and I were having tea and stroopwafels at our regular cafe-co-working space when the waitress came over and told us we had to leave. The government was shutting down all restaurants from today because of increasing cases of 'the virus'. Weird, I thought. It'll probably only last for a few days. Never have I been more wrong.
That point marked the start of the lockdown. Although I was work-obsessed and not making enough time for a real social life and hobbies, my routine up until then was still relatively healthy. I still got out, went to the gym and sauna, met people every week or so and traveled around.
The Netherlands didn't have overly restrictive rules compared to Italy or France (you could still go outside without permission), but it was shocking nonetheless. Pretty much the only places open were parks, grocery stores and 'coffee shops' where you could get a gram of weed for 10 euros. My new routine from that point on was paired down to the bare minimum: a run in the park, hammering away at my startup (more like slogging away), and occasionally indulging in a little bit of that green.
A couple of years prior to all of this happening, I did a 10-day silent meditation retreat in India, near where the Buddha was said to have been enlightened. Surely, my training in solitude would give me a big advantage during the pandemic. I could handle a little silence and isolation. In fact, I was very positive about the whole thing. I imagined I would be 'heads down' focused on my startup without the normal distractions that would slow me down, blowing past my competition and coming out victorious at the end. And if I needed to rest, I would just meditate.
That's not quite how it worked out. The comparison was flawed for a few reasons. First of all, during a silent retreat, you're not actually alone. You are surrounded by fellow meditators all sharing the struggle with you. There's certainly a feeling of community. Most importantly, you are meditating for the majority of the time. If you're meditating properly then you are actually in the opposite state that leads to burnout: you're engaged, absorbed and relaxed. The true stillness experienced on retreats have been some of the most joyful moments of my life.1
Unsurprisingly, staring at my computer with bloodshot eyes and pounding lattes wasn't quite like the peace I experienced at a meditation retreat. While I was at times absorbed in my work, I did not have a sense of community, shared struggle, and I certainly wasn't engaged and relaxed most of the time. My new sources of laughter and joy were now watching Key and Peele videos with my wife and reading chuckle-worthy corona memes.
2/ The startup goes down, down, down
The free trials we had ongoing with a couple of Japanese companies — our shot at making our first sales and raising money — came to a halt almost overnight. The story was always the same: "Sorry, the next few months are uncertain with this corona thing, so we can't spend money on any new services." The other leads we had went silent. All attempts at pitching our service to companies were met with a "let's talk later". And just like that, my hopes for world domination were crushed.
Rather than discouraging me, I knew what this meant: it was time to pivot again! Hey, shit happens, right? We'd figure it out. No time to waste. I put on my headphones, put the Ratatat on blast and got to work.
"Failure is not an option," was a saying I repeated fairly often at that time. Not in the sense of failing at a specific business model, but just in "doing this startup." I was happy to change the product and target market a million times, but I was going to make this startup work.
It was clear that our B2B coaching platform wasn't going to work if companies were being conservative. Solution: Let's change the business model back to a consumer product and target people who need help with their job search, or whatever else, during the pandemic. Our developer (who later became a co-founder) Hamish pieced together a new version of the platform in a few days. As a startup with no money, speed was one of our only true assets.
Move quickly, make mistakes, and course-correct until you find product-market fit. This is pretty common startup practice, a la Lean Startup Method. Unfortunately, whatever we tried, we weren't getting any traction. I was burning through the money I had put in. The team was getting tired. This went on for a good 3 months, from March to May, at which point I would normally have taken a vacation. But with the borders closed and hotels in the country not taking any guests, there was nowhere to go, and a break was just not in the cards. The wheels kept on spinning.
I read a great quote once:
"In order to burn out, one has to be alight."
In other words, those most committed have a greater likelihood of developing burnout. Yep, that was me. But the optimism I was injecting in the form of enthusiasm, positivity and endless hustle was not bearing fruit. For the first time in my life I felt myself becoming cynical. I started using the word "stupid" to describe the problems in front of me — very rare up to that point — and became short, snappy and started to rub people the wrong way. The incongruence between what I wanted to do and how I wanted to feel vs. what my life was actually like was widening. They say that burnout begins when work ceases to have meaning.
3/ Frenetic, under-challenged or worn out
According to one of the godfathers of burnout research, Barry Farber, there are three types of classifications for burnout.
1/ Frenetic
"The frenetic type is a profile for tenacious and energetic persons, who cope with adversity with considerable enthusiasm and interest, doing all they can and giving all they are able to give. When they perceive that the results obtained do not correspond to the invested effort, they work with more determination to meet the goals they set initially." (this was me)
2/ Underchallenged
"The underchallenged type is made up of subjects who have lost interest in their occupations and carry out their work tasks in a superficial manner. This is a group of subjects who cope with problems at work without too much involvement, seeing as they have lost their motivation along the way. In short, they are empty of challenges, motivation or desire for engagement."
3/ Worn-out
"The worn-out profile consists of dispassionate subjects who have reduced their level of involvement to the point of neglecting their responsibilities. These are workers with a degree of pessimism that has led them to lose all enthusiasm for their job, and have chosen to give up any effort in the face of the setbacks experienced. In this respect they are, 'hose who in response to frustration give up entirely.'"
The "frenetic type" best represents me at that stage, as I was overloading myself, was very ambitious, and was rejecting the idea of failure.
But I think it's important to point out that a frenetic person doesn't have to be pathological to the point of neglecting their needs or self-destruction. Take a professional athlete or musician for example. There are some exceptions, but generally they work in "sprints" rather than marathons (I wrote about that here.). Pros take lots of breaks.
In fact, in a study on professional violin players, they found that on average they take three, 90-minute "practice sprints" to work on their music, interspersed with long breaks in between. And they rarely practice for more than 4.5 hours a day. This follows the natural pattern of our energy throughout the day called the "ultradian rhythm."
The more you look around, the more you’ll find examples like this — from the routines of elite athletes to authors like Stephen King who write in sprints for only half the day.
The reason I mention this is because I want to emphasize that working hard is necessary for any startup and anyone with ambitious goals. It's almost impossible to avoid if you're building a company of more than one person. However, there is more than one way to work hard. The way in which you do it can make the difference between burning out or making it sustainable.
For the record, I wasn't taking very many breaks.
4/ At this point, why didn’t I just give up?
We must have changed the model at least five times from that point, starting with pricing, to product to business model within a span of 3 months. We were like a lost row boat out at sea during a tempestuous storm looking for any hint of land. Heroic if successful, tragic if not.
Why didn't I just pack my bags and do something else? That’s the million dollar question. There were plenty of reasons to quit. My colleagues were thousands of kilometers away and were all part-time (most of whom I had never met), so I didn't feel any strong bond to the team. I had no salary, nowhere to be promoted, and while I had control over my day, I had no control over the outcomes of my actions because of very delayed and messy feedback loops.2
Thomas Edison said, "I didn't fail, I just found 100 ways to not invent a light bulb."
In his case, he tried many materials for a filament for his light bulb. Each time a filament failed, he could check off that material and try something else. Some combinations of materials kept the bulb going for a bit longer. So, there was some data. This was a positive feedback loop that he used to keep going to try different variations. Finding a hundred ways to do it wrong ultimately led to the one way to do it right.
Now compare this to our situation. When we tried something new — a marketing campaign or product feature — we didn't have any really good analytics in place (at least not yet). We didn't use Segment, Hotjar, Amplitude, or Mixpanel. We would just try something and then it would either work, or not work.
But we couldn't say exactly where the traffic was dropping off and never had a great explanation for why. Was it because the offering was unclear, because it was too expensive, because we hadn't put enough eyeballs in front of it? There wasn't hard data. It was just effort and no results. We didn't really know if we just had to be patient and tweak a little bit, or to completely throw out what we were doing.
Despite being lost, confused and stressed, I stayed. Why?
5/ When effort outweighs reward
The effort-reward model below says an imbalance is maintained "if no alternative is available." That's certainly how I felt.
I had moved halfway across the world, sponsored under a freelance/startup visa, to work on this thing. I couldn't just give it up and do something else, even though technically I could have. In other words, my ego was all wrapped up in the process.
My problem wasn't just ego, it was a matter of skill set. How do I admit that this isn't working? How do I actually be vulnerable about my problems and open up to those closest to me? Unfortunately, these weren't skills I learned from my parents and certainly not in school. I was unable to express my emotions and honestly admit that it wasn't working and that this was no longer bringing me any joy. And that perhaps, I could use some help.
(Funny enough, we were actually starting to get a little bit of traction with our consumer-product. It wasn't much, but it was enough to feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel, so I kept going).
As summer approached after the first COVID wave, the borders were just opening up. This was a great time to take a break. I planned to see a friend in France for a few days and take a week off, but my body and mind had actually needed it weeks and weeks earlier. It was a little bit too late, as I would soon find out.
[to be continued...]
The caveat here: even with an activity as flow-inducing and rewarding as meditation, I've seen people get very "edgy" after retreats (depending on the type of meditation), especially 10 days or longer. There's also reports of negative and traumatic experiences during their retreat. So, yeah, perhaps any activity is susceptible to burnout, depending on the individual.
The idea of a positive, timely feedback loop is pretty critical for motivation. If we saw any spike in traffic or customer adoption or revenue, this would have been a positive force to keep us going. How much effort you spend without any positive feedback is a factor of your grit, stubbornness, and of course cash runway to keep going. (Big props if you can do it with a smile).