How do I keep going without burning out?

For me, it was always about structuring your day: the most important things at the top, and triaging from there.

What I found really helpful is talking to the person that brought you in. I know that may not be the person you're reporting to. I would always circle back with that person: hey, I'm feeling kind of maxed out doing these tasks. Can you help prioritize for me?

One, you might be able to get more money that way too, 'cause they're like, actually we want you. Or two, they may be like, no, that actually needs to go to someone else.

You are your own product. When do you function the most optimal, and when do you feel low?

If that's the morning, what if you flipped your business work to the beginning of days without many meetings or an early start? If you were to realign and reengineer your time in that way, it seems that it's a workable thing.

If most of your effort goes to the job, who else is going to solve that for you? You can delegate. You can stop oversupplying or overdoing. You can use AI to help you do the tasks better. What would it cost you to not work on your side hustle?

Thinking of people I've worked with in a similar situation, it's making the most of your time to make sure you don't burn out. Because if you do, you will pay on this new project, and you will pay on your personal life.

When you work on this in your spare time, it's challenging, because you also need time to decompress.

Maybe not now, or even in 3 months, but if you see some initial traction, maybe scale down. I mean working four days a week or three days a week, if your employer would be open to that. Then you will have more time to invest in this.

In startups, the tendency is to quite often wing it rather than planning carefully. Many things are executed quite well, but you do need to figure out what you're trying to achieve.

The way to keep your sanity is by having at least a short-term goal and a plan that supports it. When you're challenged on what marketing is actually doing, it's very important to know what outcome they're expecting, and to have broken that outcome down into things you can actually affect and do.

You don't have a button that says make the revenue go up. You need to get more customers. For that, you need to be visible.

We have to change our perception around rest as an entrepreneur. If we don't dial in that rest part and it's just stress, we're not getting growth. We're getting something that looks like burnout.

One thing I love to look at, in business and in my personal life, is if-then statements. They help us pattern our life in ways that make it easy versus hard. If a meeting gets cancelled, then I go outside for a walk. You can build these rules into your life so that when you get into that feeling, you don't start spiraling into it.

I also have periods where I push myself to 300% and then I crash.

I hear a lot of hyper achiever in that: somebody who constantly needs to exceed expectations. It has positive consequences: we make things happen. But in Polish we say for every success you need to pay a tax. The tax is your well-being, your health and your relationships.

When you're underwater, you first need help getting back on firm ground. Then there's the mountain you might want to climb, and those are our goals. We often don't appreciate that we might still be underwater, or still recovering on the ground, before we can start climbing.

On the rational level, it all makes sense. On an emotional level, it's a completely different story. The business is flying and then all of a sudden an AI company releases something that eats away 50% of your features. You don't sleep very well.

Sometimes I see people who like the idea of making it, of succeeding. But they never considered if they would enjoy the game. Of course, if you don't start, you don't know.

Calling it a failure is just your interpretation. It can be very unsuccessful, and you can learn so much from the process. You try to manage day by day, week by week.