Top Tips to Avoid Founder Burnout
Being a founder is exciting, but it can also drain you fast. In the past year alone, 54% of founders have felt burnt out. That kind of founder burnout affects everything, not just work. You won’t even notice it happening as it develops quietly. In this article, we explain what exactly founder burnout is and how you can avoid it.
What is Founder Burnout?
Founder burnout is when running your business becomes too much to handle. You are working all the time, thinking about your startup, even when you are not at your desk. This constant pressure, which you can call entrepreneurial stress, slowly wears you down and leaves you feeling exhausted.
It is not only about you feeling tired. With founder’s burnout, you might lose interest in your work, feel stuck, turn angry, or become anxious. Some days can feel like a struggle to just keep going. If you ignore this feeling, the burnout can harm both your health and your business.
How to Avoid Founder Burnout
There are many examples of startup founders giving up and getting consumed in founder burnout, which results in massive failures and collapses. There are many ways you can avoid this, some of which are:
Stop Working and Rest
Stress in the workplace is increasing, but as a founder, you don’t have to push yourself or your employees to the limit. Taking regular breaks and giving yourself time is pretty important if you want to avoid founder burnout. Stepping away from your work will help recharge your mind and also give you fresh ideas and energy.
Many founders work up to 100 hours a week, which is exactly what causes fast burnout. You should try to minimise your excessive workload. Rest is as important as work, as it will keep you productive for longer periods.
Set Boundaries Around Work
It is really easy for work to take over every part of your life when you are a founder. To avoid burnout, you have to set clear boundaries. Make sure to separate work from personal time, especially when you are at home.
The fact is that you should keep family time as family time and not bring work back home. When you have this separation, you can fully enjoy time with your loved ones and not worry about any business-related issues.
Don’t Do Everything Alone
Trying to manage everything by yourself can quickly become overwhelming. Many people think that if they do it all themselves, things will go perfectly, but that only leads to frustration and anxiety.
You should ask your team for help whenever needed. It might seem difficult as the leader of your business to do so, but confiding in a mentor or even leaning on friends to share the workload can certainly keep you stress-free.
Also, delegating tasks to your higher-up team will allow you to focus on what’s more important and something only you can finalize. Just remember not to overwork both yourself and your team members as well.
Learn from Your Failures
Every business suffers from losses at some point. Failure does not mean everything has ended. Instead, it should be an opportunity to learn from business failures and grow. Without being discouraged, you can take time to understand what went wrong and how you can improve.
Failure helps prepare you for future challenges, and if you take stress on simple setbacks, you will develop founder burnout, which will lead to more damage than good. Every entrepreneur has failed at least once. Respond to it differently and save yourself from burning out your health and company.
Conclusion
Founder burnout might be something you don’t feel much about right now, but it can totally change your business life. The best thing for you to do is adjust your work-life balance and try to avoid taking on too much stress. Once you start focusing on the above tips, you will feel much more relaxed and see how your business will grow slowly but steadily.