Mental Health Advice for Founders

Let's talk about a highly underrated and stigmatized topic for startup founders: Mental Health. The truth is, if your mental health isn't at its best, neither are you or your business. In this article, we'll discuss why mental health is critical for founders, practical steps for maintaining it (like sleep, exercise, and nutrition), and advanced methods for enhancing mental well-being and productivity (like work-life harmony and effective task management). Together, we can start to de-stigmatize mental health in the entrepreneurial community and help founders succeed not just professionally, but personally too.

The Basics

Prioritize these things regularly and your mental health will be 80% of where it should be. These activities are more connected to our mental health than we may think.

• Sleep for 7-9 hours every night.
• Get regular exercise. Ideally 10-20 minutes every few days.
• Eat healthy - More veggies, less sugar, more water, more organic, and less processed foods.
• Meditate - Start meditating for a few minutes every day and work your way up. Use an app like Headspace to get started if you need extra motivation.
• Take regular breaks to do things that energize you. These could be talking to a friend, drinking a cup of coffee, and watching some TikToks. But most people say that taking a short walk in nature really does the trick.
• Take time off every once in a while and completely disconnect from work. This will help prevent burnout and allow you to come back to work fresh and recharged.

Now for those of you that want the edge on the final 20%, here it is

Advanced Methods

• Harmony not balance: Don't think about Work-Life Balance, but instead, think of it as Work-Life Harmony. You want to have a fulfilled life at work, and also a fulfilled life outside of work with your hobbies or family. Try to create an internal culture that allows you to take time to recharge whenever you need it, guilt-free.
• Have a TODO list comprised of two sections. The first section includes all of the necessary things you should do that day and make it easy enough so that you could finish it in half of the day. The second section will be the bonus items you should finish that day. This way you are operating out of accomplishment and plenty rather than falling behind and feeling stressed. Momentum and perception are more powerful than we know for motivation and energy.
• Create buffer space in your day for serendipity or other tasks that may come up instead of trying to plan every minute. Set aside 20% just for unexpected events like important e-mails, impromptu client calls, or fixing a server issue.
• See a therapist and talk about things that stress you out, take your energy away, or burn you out. Problem-solve and take action on how to remedy your situation.
• Delegate when you have too much on your plate. Take at least one brainstorming session per week to think about what you can delegate and to whom just to make your life easier.
• Duvet Days: Take a page out of Simon Sinek's handbook and embrace the concept of "duvet days" for your company. This is where employees could take a day off without explanation, and encourage people to be honest about taking time off for personal reasons. We need to trust people to set their own boundaries when it comes to work and personal life, and that the two should work in tandem for the individual, not against.