Preserving one's mental health during the process of creating a startup is imperative to the company’s success — here are a few tips on how to do so from Abdo Riani, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of startup development company VisionX Partners.
Riani's first tip is to know your resources and don't overexert yourself. Leadership can be highly demanding, especially when an entire company is resting on your shoulders. Knowing when to delegate is key to preserving your sanity, and while throwing money at a problem rarely solves it, outsourcing should be done strategically and reasonably.
And if you're a parent of small children, Riani says, don't even think about trying to found a new startup, as you won't have enough hours in the day to be able to juggle both your home life and your business life.
Next, you have to keep a sense of identity outside your work. By being known only as a founder, the success or failure of your business completely defines who you are as a person. Any startup founder knows that some businesses don't work out, but to get back up and try again, they have to see themselves as working on a project rather than being the project.
Identity can be cultivated outside of one's job by maintaining hobbies and interests, socializing as much as possible, and keeping an emotional distance between yourself and the project.
Lastly, getting a reasonable amount of exercise and sleep can be hard for a founder, but everyone knows that it's the best way to stay in peak physical and mental condition. Founders have to work harder than many others to avoid burnout, and that's best accomplished by having a healthy lifestyle that values your well-being. You know you should be drinking water, getting rest, and walking every day, says Riani — so why aren't you doing it?
