We live in the world of technology, fast paced, everyone hunched over screens with little or no time for themselves & by all indications it is only going to get worse.
In the world of tech, companies / startups leaders need to keep an eye on themselves. Many people write about fitness and exercising etc,. from personal experience I can say that 100% of them are 100% correct.
In the last 12-18 months the brain space that I have given to servers, users, bugs, code etc has partially been replaced by nutrition, calories, eating clean and going to the gym.
The biggest benefit of being fitter is mental, the amount of clarity I have gained on this journey is astounding.
We talk about “learning from your failures” in the startup lexicon a lot, honestly it take a lot of clarity to recognise a failure and even more mental fitness to learn anything from it. That to me has been my biggest gain.
Today I am very clear about the architecture mistakes I made, where I gave up too soon on marketing, where we overbuilt and lost a window of opportunity, the people mistakes we made etc.
3 things I would tell everyone to do.
Eat clean and work out
Get into the habit of reading labels, cut out sugar and increase protein intake. Start some kind of physical activity 3 times a week for 30 minutes, let it be anything but get it to a point where it becomes a habit and you start to crave it. Ideally find someone to do it with, it helps keep you motivated.
? Recommended by NextBigWhat Team : Capillary Founder, Aneesh On Staying Fit And Running (A Startup)
Fix your people problem
EVERYBODY needs a mentor. Are you surrounded by people you look upto? Do they add value to you as a person? Do you learn something form them every day / week? This may sound selfish, narcissistic or straight out wrong but in reality you will be a product of your environment and your initially startup will be as good as your worst employee. A good place to start is your call / message list on your phone. who do you talk to the most?
Find someone who is at least 10X more successful than your most conservative projection and spend 1-2 hours a week with them. When you do land that mentor, be open and receptive.
Make the effort to find that buddy, that erstwhile boss or that senior from college who you can talk to on a regular basis, this person is smart, you admire them for a skill they have and you don’t. Coffee with such people every 2-3 weeks
Figure out what you don’t know
#2 will help you get a list of your weaknesses, things you are not good at, things you don’t know. These are personal traits. One VERY common example especially for the sales / marketing guys is something called “Imposter syndrome”. Another example maybe that you like to oversimplify things and hence inadvertently undervalue yourself, Introspect and figure this out.
My recommendation on what you do with it is very simple, FORGET about it. These things are your weaknesses, know them and be aware of them but don’t waste energy covering for them, you have an equal / larger set of strengths, play to them.
[Guest article by PC Chitalkar of 6degreesit. He earlier wrote an insightful piece on Why Services Companies Are An Ignored Opportunity In The Startup Ecosystem.]
