How Clocking Out Has Helped Me Deal With BurnOut
Startups are hard. Building something from scratch is a big deal; no matter how skilled, experienced or hardworking you are, it is bound to take a toll on your mental health.
As a founder, I have experienced moments of incredible highs and lows while building my startup, and I’m still a part of the journey where things don’t make sense, and I have a powerful urge to quit.
A founder’s job is hard. It’s not only about the tangible parts of building a company (product, marketing, finance, legal, and whatnot) that keep you up at night, but also the intangible but infinitely more exhausting expectations, disappointments, and emotions that come with it. Starting a company is challenging but growing and maintaining it is pretty damn hard too.
And the world doesn’t make it easy either. Wherever we go, from workspaces to memes, there’s one thing or the other reminding us that we have to hustle or we will get left behind. Even Mark Cuban says you must outwork your competition, or they’ll put you out of business.
It’s true. A startup journey is just one ride after another on a seeming eternal roller coaster, and founders are expected to keep going, come hell or high water. We are expected to chin up, hustle, and hold on.
But the most significant difference, I believe, between working a regular job and building your startup is perseverance. For instance, if you feel run down in your job, you can take a break, go on a vacation, get your mind right, and return to what you are doing. But, on the other hand, if you feel run down while building your company, it feels like the end of the world.
It all boils down to grit because building a startup is a marathon, not a sprint. The sky is the limit to your expectations. And when you are hustling this hard, you must also factor in some time to deal with the mental fatigue that comes with it, or all your progress is bound to go kaput.
With great hustle comes an even greater burnout.
I’ve been on autopilot for some time and didn’t even realize I was burning out. I kept going, and at times, I just felt lost. I was getting nowhere with my product, hit roadblocks more often, lost the ability to think of a workaround, and kept doing the same thing again and again, hoping this time I’d magically get it right. In the end, it was terrible, and I had had enough.
So, to cure my burnout, I took a page from the regular 9–5 work schedule — the “clock out.”
One of the greatest things about being your own boss is setting your own hours, and I feel like a fool for never leveraging this.
I didn’t set any hours. Instead, I kept stretching the day for as long as I could. Finally, I realized that I didn’t need to keep working endlessly. So, I decided to set a time every day to clock out and treat that time as an important appointment I couldn’t miss.
And boy, has it been a blessing! I clock out every day at 6 PM, and unlike before, I don’t work on Sundays. I review my work at the end of the day, chalk out the timetable for the next day, and shut everything out.
It’s been a couple of months, and it has been great since I’ve started taking control of my time. I’m hitting deadlines on my product development, I’ve set marketing funnels, got my paperwork in order, and spent every day strategizing growth with some extra time on my hand. Outside work, I’m spending a great deal of time with family, finished reading three books in a month, resumed my #100DaysOfCode challenge, and now go out regularly to meet long-lost friends.
I’m less anxious and more inspired. Less frustrated and more forthcoming. Less tired and more proactive. I see a consistent growth pattern daily, not just in my work but also in myself. I feel like I’m not just going through life but growing through life.
Clocking out has helped me avoid burnout, make the most of my free time, set priorities, and take control of my life. I know now that work is a priority but so are family, free time, and mental health.
