Founder Guilt - When watching a Youtube video feels like a crime
I have literally forgotten how to rest, because I feel like I need to work all the time.
I imagine it's similar to how working mums often feel (not that they should, but research shows most do). You feel like your baby is crying, pooping their pants, crying for mummy but here you are trying to "take a break" or "find your zen again". You feel painfully guilty, and for what? Something as pathetic watching a Youtube video.
Yep. It happened yesterday. There I was, eating my morning yogurt and granola, watching a Vox video (because I've also forgotten how to do only one thing at a time), and feeling like an absolute monster.
How did I get here?
Being the nerd I am, I decided to investigate. According to a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, 64% of entrepreneurs and small business owners feel guilty for taking breaks, and 35% reported feeling overwhelmed every day. That sounds familiar.
So what's making us feel this way? I have a guess: the founder binary. It's a concept I've made up (lol!) to describe what I see too often in the rhetoric the media and the founders themselves use to discuss what a founder is.
The Founder Binary.
It's this idea that the founder is either a genius who doesn't have to put in any real work in (E.g. A tech genius "messing around" with his friends to come across a billion dollar idea) or a back-breaking grinder who works day and night with 2 hours of sleep to "make it happen".
But none of this is real. There is no successful founder who is purely a "genius" and didn't put any authentic effort in. There can't be. There also isn't any founder who isn't brilliant to some degree. That is also impossible. It's usually a healthy mix of both - or what we call "being a smart and hard working person". But that would be too human and boring. Too blasé.
What this dehumanising of a founder does is that it makes it near-impossible for us feel that we have the permission to be human. Sometimes we don't hit those numbers (gasp), we make dumb decisions that cost money (horror) or waste time watching Youtube videos (gag).
What have I gotten myself into.
So I've decided to embody my therapist and let myself breathe a little. Because I am sick of not being able to enjoy time off because I feel like I need to be "hustling" 24/7. (When I felt the most accomplished last year was when I worked 80 hours p/w for 4 consecutive weeks. For real.)
Not knowing how to rest doesn't make me a genius.
That just proves that I am a fool at living life.
