Playing the Long Game: Making Entrepreneurship a Sustainable Life – Dr. Sherry Walling

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0:07[Music] last year I got to do a quick attendee talk about the process of starting their the business and sort of my experience of being on the sidelines and what it what it was like to have those conversations about like really you're gonna leave your job and and what exactly you're gonna do and how will we you know pay the mortgage and so it's nice to be on the other side of that a little bit and so my talk today is more about the long term thinking about how to make this work not just for the adrenaline-filled early years but for the you know for your life for the

0:52duration of how long you want it to work how long you want this to be sort of live the founder life and my job I think at this point is to shift your focus a little bit I know that you are probably at saturation point with great ideas about how to build your app to ensure the success of your company and the tools at your building so let's let those neuronal connections sort of solidify a little bit and shift our attention and the thing that I would like you to think about is in my opinion probably the most important resource that you're bringing to your startup and

1:35that is what your own mind yourself that if you are not well in your mind the rest of it doesn't really matter we know that a founders life is actually a very difficult life there's some great research that looks at the relationship between anxiety and founders and that founders entrepreneurs in general founders specifically have higher rates of anxiety than they're kind of nine-to-five compadres there's also the risk of isolation especially among those of you who are doing solo startups you're living in this world in your head all by yourself and it can be hard to feel like people get you they understand what's happening and although there's wonderful

2:28creativity and the ability to make and do something yourself there's also a shadow side there's the real reality of isolation a feeling alone in this venture that's really important to you we also know that you are taking on a great deal of risk that makes you vulnerable no one else is going to sign your paycheck once you commit to doing this you commit to taking on the risk of making making it of making it work and however you talk yourself through that you have to realize you're sort of outrunning this demon of vulnerability of financial vulnerability of isolation there's also the real risk of failure that many of these startups fail and

3:22that will keep you awake at night what do you do with that thought how do you cope with it and what does it mean about you if you fail is it sort of a global failure of your humanists yourself as a person or have you figured out ways to talk to yourself about the reality of failure that don't involve so much shame because shame is a killer emotion it makes sense to feel bad if you fail to be stressed to be worried to you know really mourn the loss of your time and your energy but shame is a different feeling shame is the sense of I am bad I

4:01am worthless I am a failure not the behavior I failed see the distinction it's an important one and as many of you have already talked about there's a lot of blurred lines in the life of a founder is their work time is it family time many of you are working from home and are trying to sort of figure out how take care of kids or be present with your spouses while also working and doing everything at once sometimes crammed into very small amounts of time so the successes are fantastic and this is a great life but the realities are also that it's very hard and that there

4:47are some real downsides to pay attention to and to not run from and I'm certainly not the one or the only one who is working to make this point as Mike talked about it was a great talk of business of software about depression and founders that Greg burr guested I'm not sure if I'm saying his name correctly there's also been a lot of interest in the role of mental health and the psychological toll of entrepreneurship probably in large part to the tragic deaths of Aaron Schwartz and Dana Sherman right okay I'm sorry so these are very different conversations than what we've been having all day but there are important

5:32conversations important things to think about there is this complicated relationship between mental illness and creative out-of-the-box kinds of people so some of you have been drawn to founding or starting your own company because there are certain things about you that make it hard for you or make it not a fit for you to stay in that nine-to-five corporate world so things like hypomania attention problems depression things that we would probably qualify as mental illness but actually make you well-suited to be a founder so there may be sort of a self-selecting bias in this group of people who are starting their own companies toward some things like anxiety depression are the

6:22things we categorize as mental illness I like this quote from Jason Calacanis I've always believed that being a founder is an unhealthy pursuit at times and few have disagreed certainly not those who have done it read any biography of a successful founder and you'll find collateral damage around and certainly in those individuals and so what my talk is really about today is how do we minimize this collateral damage how do we honestly acknowledge what is and what can go wrong how do we take our own health seriously and how do we take action before this spiral reaches the bottom this is my codebook this is the DSM the Diagnostic and

7:17Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders it makes for a great late night reading but it is the the textbook that categorizes everything that we quantify as mental illness and in a little book a lovely little book called how to stay sane an author named Philippa Perry made this great observation about the diagnosis included in this textbook she argued that the things that we talk about as mental illness can sort of be thought of on a spectrum as disruption towards chaos or disruption towards rigidity so chaos and rigidity and that when we think about what goes wrong with human functioning we're often somewhere in this spectrum between chaos and

8:11rigidity so what does that mean for us you don't have to qualify for a mental illness to sort of be on one end of this spectrum chaos is this picture of a person whose life is kind of all over the place they are maybe highly distracted they're doing 18 things at once it's difficult for them to focus this maybe somebody who's dabbling without shipping or working on multiple projects on one time at one time without like a clear path or sense of success for the app that they're focused on this is sort of a gogogo collapse mentality and it may be somebody who really doesn't kind of know

8:59their own mind isn't really comfortable in their own skin is maybe kind of working out their own family history their father issues or their mother issues they're trying to prove something but the angst with which they're doing it keeps them from really focusing with much depth or clarity on what they're doing so again the behavior here is pretty impulsive and disorganized and it may come with these incomplete thoughts I just have to build a few more features before I ship or I can't ship it's not good enough yet or comparing themselves I wonder what Rob walling is doing trying to work something out trying to make it better never feeling like it's

9:54good enough but also like not really paying attention to data not thinking clearly about how they know when it's time to finish something the emotional part of this chaoticness is the sense in which we are our feelings our feelings define us our feelings define our decisions what we feel must be true and I don't know about you but most of us have feelings that go up and down quite a bit every micro comp Rob says I'm never doing this again probably especially today I'm never doing this again but thankfully that's one feeling and it fits in a larger context of feelings but to be chaotic is

10:44somebody who has that thought or that feeling I'm never doing this again and then actually acts on that but without considering the larger context of the situation or the larger context of how they're doing some of you have experienced monkey mind where your mind is bouncing all over the place and you're struggling to focus you might have you're you know you're you're texting with someone you're chatting with someone and you're trying to code and work and you're watching a child at the same time all over the place it can be part of this chaotic sort of way of being some of us have life induced chaos

11:26there are evenings where Rob and I struggle to finish a sentence because of the busyness of our home and our lives and that's fine on some evenings but when that's your larger life pattern and it's hard to be present or to have much depth with anything any one thing because you're too fragmented you're too all over the place you're starting to sort of tip in that direction of being not well not okay not thriving I just sound like any of it you know through chaotic no rigidity is the other end of this spectrum so this is the lack of flexibility lack of thinking outside the box of trying over and over to make

12:18something work in the same way because maybe it worked that way at one time but not integrating new information maybe ignoring the big picture maybe feeling like you have to stay in the lines to be successful it's sort of an outdated rigid way of responding to the world and you might see sort of repetitive inflexible actions and these are these are the red flag words for rigidity always never must should when you find yourself thinking that way or saying those words you have to do a little double check am i being rigid am I being too rigid here this is never going to work I am wasting my time nothing I do

13:13I'm always going to be a failure I'm not as smart as Heaton Shaw few of us are fear dictates decisions you're also doing a lot of black and white thinking it has to be this way or that way this or that and that's rarely true there's often a lot of middle ground the other thing that you might find yourself doing if you're a little bit kicked on the ridgid side of the spectrum is catastrophic if then statements if this email blast is not well received my startup will certainly fail and my wife will leave me and my kids will hate me and you know my life is just over at

14:00that point and I'm being a little bit light-hearted but the reality is that we do think like this right there are moments where we think if then if this doesn't go the way that I want it to then there will be severe catastrophic consequences and again those things are rarely really true but we find ourselves thinking that way when we're struggling to control or especially when we are afraid fear is kind of the primary driver behind rigidity it's the desire to control external variable variables it's the fear of the unknown the fear of what you can't control and it can be a dangerous place to live we all go there

14:51sometimes for sure but if you're living if you're there all the time if that's your default way of approaching the world then you know you might really want to ask yourself look at my okay am I am I who I want to be or am I not well so the question the challenge that many of us face is finding balance finding balance between chaos and rigidity finding balance to sort of be and do the things that we who we want to be and I like to talk about this in sort of two ways taking time out and taking time in so I'm gonna throw at you a bunch of ideas

15:35of things to implement or strategies to sort of pursue your own personal well-being and some of them will be perfect for you and some of them won't matter so or won't be applicable to you so we'll just sort of you sort of take what's useful so when we think about time out what we're looking for is a change of perspective and I think time outs are really helpful for those of us who run a little rigid who are pretty stuck in our ways of thinking to take a timeout is to step outside of those well-worn patterns to do something else to think about something else so Mike sort of set me up thanks Mike

16:16for the bump set spike here sleep is a really really important way to take a time out I'll say more about that in a second but also things like exercise and nutrition these are the three Mike and I didn't coordinate our talks but these are the three that are really essential if you want your brain to function well you really have to have some dedicated attention and taking care of these three parts of your life another one is play really taking time out to have fun to play with your children to go on vacation to have a hobby to be something more than your app you have to be able

17:01to be something more than your app I'm a big fan also of taking breaks from screens from these wonderful magic devices that makes our make our lives better but we can really kind of forget how to sit I to I with someone or how to be in a place without like having a constant stream of news and information always stimulating us what we want when we're taking a time out is to let our brain do something different to let it practice some different pathways and to let it be still to have a change of pace and a change of content so taking breaks from screens can be a great way to do

17:40that and that can be one day a week or just one evening at dinner or making sure that you're building in spaces in your lives where you're not always plugged in I'm a big fan of travel for changing the perspective if you feel so rigid and so kind of a slave to your app it might be time to sort of do and see things that are very different to recharge your ability to take in information from your environment to enjoy novelty new sights and new smells and to understand that the world is big and although what you're working on is so important and you should love it and

18:22enjoy it you want to put it in its proper place in your life and in the world of what's important to you another way to take a timeout is to serve to spend one day every six months helping with a shoe drive or feeding people at your local homeless shelter and there's a really great research that supports the importance of service in terms of continuing flexible thinking and also overall life satisfaction so to realize that even though you might be struggling and what you're doing with your app that you have a sort of a role to play in helping the well-being of another person and it helps you realize that again

19:12you're bigger than this project that you're working on there's more to there's more going on and the other part of service is that it kind of again puts your experience in a larger context and it's not about feeling guilty for what you have or what you're doing but it is about realizing that again there's a great big world out there and people struggle with all kinds of different things and it might actually make you kind of grateful for the thing that you're struggling with because it's kind of a privilege to be able to do this kind of work and to be your own boss and to be creative and be able to do the

19:51kinds of things that you're doing so again it just helps put things in perspective I want to say a little bit more about sleep and Mike gave you some great information sorry this is taking a long time about some of the research behind sleep I think the importance of sleep in terms of maintaining your fitness your anxiety level six sleep might be the single most important behavioral activity that we do in our day not only does it help keep us healthy it also especially for you all in this room it is a time when your brain is incredibly active your brain is often more active during sleep than it

20:42is when you're awake so your brain is working on memory consolidation it's sort of reviewing the day and taking information that you have taken in in your day and it's helping to solidify the neural pathways that help you remember that data it also we think some new research suggests that your brain is working on complex problems while you're sleeping so your brain might be doing a lot of the work to solve the kinds of things that you're having trouble solving when you're awake your brain is working on it when you're asleep so if you're not sleeping well you're definitely not functioning to your optimal level in your app you know

21:23you're not able to really do the kinds of complex problem-solving that you need to do to be successful there's a great TED talk about sleep that if you haven't seen it I highly recommend it it's dr. Russell Foster and the title is why do we sleep and it's you know TED Talks 12 minutes or something that will give you great information about what the role that sleep plays in your life and how important it is to you so another part of taking the time out or resetting what's happening in your body and in your mind is simply breathing when you're stressed when you're anxious your body is sort of trigger triggering this

22:09whole hormonal muscular chemical response cycle that is designed to help you in the short term but over the long term can be very dangerous to you and one of the things that is so powerful and important to being able to control stress and anxiety is simply to breathe I know it sounds really simple but to be able to do this well is a very powerful way to interrupt the feedback loop between your mind and your body where your mind is telling your body that it's worried and your body is responding to try to respond to the anxiety and the worry that your mind is giving but

22:57you're kind of creating this mess between your mind and your body where everybody's anxious and worked up so if you can interrupt that pattern then you can refocus your mind and have this sort of very powerful sense of ability to control your own anxiety so I thought we'd get a little experience I'll hear you're gonna try it try it go for that okay so I'm going to kind of walk you through how to do this how to breathe how to control your anxiety through breath so the first thing is kind of resettle maybe how you're sitting in your chair so that your back is against the back of

23:38your chair and your feet are flat on the floor

23:45okay if you can you might want to lower your screen okay you can you can bring it back up later you'll be alright put your hands on your kind of on your lower abdomen and what I would like you to do is when you take a breath in think about where the air is going so sort of in through your nostrils down through the center of your body and you want the air to actually fill your stomach fill your abdomen and you want to feel it moving so let's try it all together let's take a breath in you feel your stomach moving and then as you exhale you should feel

24:34your stomach contract so one way to do this is to close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so leave kind of leave your hands relaxed on your stomach and take a breath in for four counts so as you breathe in count one two three four and breathe out one two three four do that again as you inhale breathing in breathe in calm peace relaxation and breathe out anxiety fear stress worry and as you breathe in again picture a place where you feel comfortable happy safe the beach the mountains your comfy chair in your living room and as you breathe out settle into that place feel your body kind of relaxing in that

25:55place

26:04on your next inhalation stay there stay in that place where you feel safe comfortable calm feel it filling you as your abdomen is filled with oxygen and then exhale let yourself be there we'll take one more breath together as you breathe in think about oxygen it's nourishing its life-giving your cells need it you desperately need it and as you exhale releasing the carbon dioxide that isn't useful to you anymore you can release it get it out of your body it's waste so go ahead and come back to this room open your eyes if you close them anybody feel a little bit more relaxed than they did before yeah

27:16so even for breaths like that four four by four four seconds in four seconds out four times even something as simple as that can help stop the anxiety cycle can be a little mini timeout where you let your body relax so your mind can focus your mind can have a different experience

27:51so I definitely don't want to communicate but the only way to do this well and to be healthy is a founder is to take time away because that's not the reality right sometimes what's needed is time in in a deeper more intentional way and this may be the case if you're if you're someone who runs a little chaotic and you find it hard to focus specific ways of thinking about how to engage your work in an intentional and an alert way focused time in organizing your time last year when I was with you I talked about our Sunday night huddle that Rob and I do to try to figure out our life

28:40who's going where when who's working when who's got the kids who's like it's the map of what's going on and so I know that on Friday mornings for four hours I have a solid block of uninterrupted time to do whatever I'm doing to work on a talk to do some writing whatever it it is that I need focused time for and you might want to carve out those times in your own schedule when is my specific time to do this one thing this the time when I always record my podcast or always work on my blog and it's just sacrosanct it's specific it's focused and you're not going to have

29:19distractions during that time you might not be able to do that for everything you'd like to do it for but that's when you have to prioritize what are you gonna focus on where are you gonna put your time into another thing that is great in terms of a time in the kind of focus is coming to conferences giving yourself time and space to learn to get new ideas to be around colleagues to take time away from your normal schedule to put time in to thinking about the bigger picture of how you do your app or your business another way to do this in an even deeper more specific way is

29:57through masterminds I'm also going to talk a little bit about personal metrics and retreats so master minds to say a little bit more about these I get it you're all individual you want to be autonomous you want to be a solo founder you want to do it on your own you want a bootstrap fabulous you actually can't do that by yourself that you all of us need others we need feedback about how we're doing what we're doing well I read a study that talked about the role of mentors and role models for successful entrepreneurs and I guess something like 54% of successful entrepreneurs had a specific

30:40role model or mentor someone that they talked with about their business idea and of those people who used a role model 30% of that group said that they couldn't have been successful in their startup without their role model so having people who can give you ideas and feedback about what you're doing and answer some tough questions for you who are your role models who can help you find balance who can give you feedback about like wow you're sounding really chaotic this week or you keep trying the same thing expecting it to be different but it's not different so let's try something else can sort of help you

31:22gauge where you are on this chaos rigidity scale and who do you trust to be part of your feedback loop I'm sure most of you have heard the 10,000 hours statement right that it takes 10,000 hours to develop expertise or to become really excellent at something there's actually a caveat to the research about that 10,000 hours of practicing something the wrong way makes you really go to doing it wrong the important thing about 10,000 hours is the feedback loop that goes with it so if you're going to be a high level athlete or professional musician you need a coach or a teacher or a practice partner who can work with

32:08you during those 10,000 hours that you're putting in to say you know hold it hold your racket a little this way or make sure you get your bow up or make adjustments on the details of how you're doing your work and that's the value of a mastermind that's the value of a role model of a mentor that you need sort of these little specific tweaks that are very much about you and what you're doing but are informed by someone who understands your app understands your business what you're trying to do and understand who you are so it's very specific tailored feedback it's different than what you

32:44would read in a book or get at a conference it's much more personal so I know things like the founder cafe are kind of moving in this direction to help make sure that people have the support of a mastermind group I've also talked to at times about the role that the mastermind group has played in Rob's life and therefore my life in that he has somebody to talk about the details and the ideas with that's not me because I'm actually not a founder and I actually want to talk about other things like our kids are what we're having for dinner and so to be able to go deep with

33:19someone who is committed to that conversation with you on a weekly basis or a monthly basis is an incredible asset to the success of your startup so how many of you during this conference have checked your website metrics anybody yeah okay I saw you doing it so you all pay a lot of attention right to what's happening with your site to how many people are visiting it I know that you well we're gonna hear a talk tomorrow all about metrics but I guess I'm wondering how you track your personal metrics how you know how you're doing how you know what it's looking like inside your own head if you're well

34:15if you're thriving if you're performing in the way that you would like to or if your inner world looks a little bit like this how do you take time to sort of get inside your own brain we call this metacognition thinking about thinking paying attention to how we're thinking and how we're doing in our own heads so that we don't look like this so that our inner life looks a little more like this or this or my personal favorite this so what kind of data do you need to track on yourself how do you know how do you what do you need to pay attention to to

34:59know whether you're doing okay there's an old Ignatian practice called the examine which simply invites people each day to ask what was life giving today what sucked life today that's my own translation what was my high point what was my low point where did I feel flow where did I love my life today and where didn't I those are very simple questions that can be answered in a fragment that you can track in a spreadsheet or in a journaling app and they're really important pieces of data to help you know what you're actually enjoying because we are so good at tunnel down focus at responding to the fires that we

35:55have to put out at managing the tasks that it's really easy to forget to actually ask are we enjoying our life are we doing this well so I am a fan of recording a daily check-in another thing if you are a writer kind of person you might consider doing is keeping a journal I know it may be it sounds a little like high school girl but keeping a journal has really strong research support in terms of immune functioning lower blood pressure life satisfaction and stronger relationships so it's one of those practices that again like breathing is simple and obvious but deeply powerful if you really commit to doing it if you don't

36:41feel like you want to write kind of a dear diary thing every day right one thing that you're grateful for each day one thing that went well that made you happy even paying attention to that metric can give you a good sense of what you're sort of what you're responding to what's working in your life I think what helps or what happens when we dare to be self observant when we are working on becoming more self-aware is that we are practicing telling our story we're working on a positive personal narrative a sense of who we are we're telling our story all the time but how are we

37:25telling it are we telling it through chaos are we telling it through rigidity or are we telling it in a way that talks about what we are loving and what we are doing and the great ideas and creativity that we're experiencing so practice your story practice telling it practice thinking about it and when you feel bad or when you have the side I'm never doing micro comp again just observe it don't judge it emotions are momentary they're temporary they're really important information but they're not they don't embody the whole story about us but if we collect them over time then we have good information about decisions we need to make

38:07directions we need to go get comfortable with your emotions the good ones and the bad ones pay attention to them take them seriously another strategy the last one that I'll talk about for time in is a retreat and Robin I have been doing these yearly for a couple of years now and it's become a really important and really powerful part of our lives and I want to be clear that this is time in it's not time out this is not margaritas on the beach that's a good thing too but that is a break from your work a retreat is a very specific and focused time to think about

38:53some deeper questions in your work we go for 48 hours or longer so we try to spend two nights away I should clarify I'm speaking in the plural because we both do this but we do this separately go by ourselves not with the family not with the kids we need quiet focused time so it should be solitary to be screen free if possible I know it can be really difficult to be away from email for that long so if you need to set aside part of your retreat time to do some email or put out fires or pay attention to things that can't go without your attention for

39:31two days fine but minimize other work that you're doing sometimes it's important to go in with a couple of specific questions like should I take on a partner should I sell my app should I you know launch a new product this year you're asking a big question and you're gonna sit with that big question for a couple days and record information about kind of what's coming up in your mind as you think about that big question you can also use those examine questions on a retreat where you're basically asking my look over the last year of my life what were my high points what wait what

40:14do I love what do I want to do again and what are my low points what do I want to get rid of or eliminate from my life you might also map out some personal and professional goals for a year so it's a really again important way to keep data on yourself what do I want what do I love what do I need to get out of my life because it sucks energy from me and I think the last thing is that once if you do this well if you really go in and really think deeply take it seriously and make decisions based on it I went on

40:53a retreat on maybe three four years ago and I realized that all of the things that I disliked were about my university job working as a professor I didn't like grading I didn't like faculty meetings I didn't like committees and they were like 18 things that I didn't like they all had to do with my job well guess what I quit my job it was that clear to me when I looked at all of the information that this is not working I am not doing well in this and so it was really gratifying to go on a retreat the next year and see all of the things that I disliked last

41:30year are gone from my life I don't have them anymore now you can't always do that because every once in a while I don't like something that's going on with my kids but I can't get rid of them so I had to like you know ask myself how can i how can I do this differently this year I went on my retreat and I realized that a lot of my low points were about my kids and they were about how frustrated I were I am or have been with certain parts of their lives or a dynamic together and I realized I can't cope with what they're doing but I need

42:02to be a little bit more proactive about what I'm doing which means I'm irritable I'm angry I have a short temper so I need to change things in my life so that I'm doing that better so I rearranged my work schedule so that I can go to yoga three times a week and relax and take care of myself and have quiet time and that simple change has made a really big difference and the amount of sort of tension in our home and so if you go in and really think about these questions it is time to make decisions and you can change these factors in your life that are causing

42:38trouble so when I do it I go and I use a big piece of butcher paper and scribble all over it and then I put it into a spreadsheet so that I can track it from year to year Rob uses a mul schema notebook which he takes so seriously he had it tattooed on his arm which is cool good some people have their wife's name on their arm but you have your notebook it's good whatever all right I think the bottom line is that we are imperfect beings and we have great ideas but we get snagged and we get snarled sometimes sometimes in chaos sometimes in rigidity

43:28sometimes in full-on full-blown mental illness and when we acknowledge that we're imperfect and that we don't always do it right and that we are going to fail and going to mess up then I think we have all kinds of space to just simply ask how do we do this better how do we do this better how do we live more the life that we want to live one thing I want to say really quick this is the the mental health professional in me how do you know when you need help when you have significant sleep disruption for a you know a couple of weeks to a month when you're crossing

44:09the line and this means when you scream at your child or you get a little rough with them or you snap at your wife in a way that really isn't okay and you know that for you it's not okay you've crossed the line and you're trying to figure out how to backpedal from that line that might be a time that tells you you're not coping well you need some help a prolonged inability to focus or to shift your thoughts perseveration the hamster wheel is going and your mind is spinning on something and despite all of your best efforts you can't get out of it that's a great time to get some help

44:51the sense of I'm just not myself and it stays with you for a for awhile for a couple weeks or more or things like apathy sadness or flat mood lack of mood lack of feeling that might be a time to get help and then of course thoughts of self-harm or disregard for your own safety those are not uncommon thoughts they're not uncommon feelings but so important that it you say something that you see a therapist you see your physician you see your pastor you see somebody you talk with somebody because we don't have to dwell in these kinds of feelings and experiences I came home in January of

45:402013 and I found Rob in our home office and he was crying and I immediately thought you know what where are the children and are your parents okay and what's going on and he told me about the suicide of Aaron Schwartz and his tears were not necessarily about Aaron specifically in that we didn't know him but the tears were for you guys the tears were for our children our sons who are quirky and smart and idealistic and angsty sometimes therefore all of the people who have great potential and great creativity and great ideas but who get sunk who get overwhelmed and who can't find their way out of it and

46:31that's why I'm here because there are really painful parts of this process the failure is real the challenges are real but there are many many ways to live a happy life and if this is working for you awesome if it's not working for you if you're suffering if this is terrible on your heart and your relationships and your inner life then do something different I think the importance is that we're living well with the life that we have so here's a bunch of resources to help you think about some of the topics that I've that I've raised and I can make these available in a different

47:18format that will be easier to track down but I think my time is up thanks for your attention [Applause] this is not a question but more of a comment so about three months ago I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and stage one kidney disease and that was as a result of being stressed so a few ways to avoid that a great app is called couch to 5k and it'll get you running a 5k and basically ten weeks there's something called analog Sunday where basically you take sunday off from all screens and you've pricing on an infomercial but it's called a nutribullet it's a way to get your

48:01veggies and fruit in a smoothie so those are just a few tips that you can use if you've got any issues fantastic thank you we also practice screen free Sunday for most Sundays we play games and look at each other it's amazing well I know eye contact who does that um I was wondering if you or actually anybody in the room know of resources for professionals to talk to who are familiar with entrepreneurial issues like you know I would love to go through sometimes you need couples counseling right with my wife but I don't know if a kind of standard therapist would deeply understand all the issues like you know

48:56think that you you say you know about from going through with Rob and stuff like that um a good therapist should be able to be helpful even if they don't kind of know the ins and outs of your particular story somebody that's well trained that you find trustworthy and they seem to know what they're talking about they are professional there is a new kind of think tank it's a partnership between UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley that is looking at entrepreneurial mental health I think they're doing a lot of research I don't know if they have a practice component so the the answer really is no I don't

49:37know of specialized programs that are really lurking at treatment that's related to entrepreneur mental health but there are a lot of great practitioners out there who you know with with a little bit of information if you can help guide them give them some resources they should be able to get up to snuff pretty quickly unless others know of a specific or a specialized program I don't unfortunately when you do your 48 hour plus retreats is that with you and your husband or that's strictly you're by yourself it's by myself yeah we both go by ourselves yes we like each other but it's the space to really not have to

50:19respond to anything or anyone else except what's happening in your own head but it's kind of the importance of it do that try

50:35one issue I've always struggled with is like determining when something is just not working or that you haven't tried hard enough yet and when is that line when it's just not worth doing anymore or when it's just just not extend you're not and tried hard enough yet so yeah I mean I think in some ways one of the ways that I would think about that decision is as you if you actually are collecting kind of personal data and you realize that day in and day out over and over for months that's your source of frustration or that's your low point of your life you might ask like do I really

51:12want to be doing this anymore is or is it at a point where you know I have just put so much into this and it's no longer valuable to me it's no longer worth it so this is one way of thinking about that question but I also think a mastermind is really helpful like people who understand what you're thinking about and what you're trying to do if they're honest with you if they're good at being kind of your thought partners then they should be able to give you some honest feedback about like okay guy it's just time it's just time to do something else so first fantastic talk but I one

51:51comment or one like bit of something that we do of my family that's really started to work we picked it up for my kid actually who picked it up at camp last year and every night we sit around the table for dinner we do something called rose thorn bud so you have to say what's the best part of your day or what were the best parts your day what was the worst part of your day and what are you looking forward to tomorrow it's really good for keeping in sync but it also puts perspective on did you have a good day or was it not such as much a

52:17great day and since we started doing it we actually if we go out to dinner we can't do it or with family and everything we actually do it the car on the way home or like family dinners a big family and stuff they actually want us to do it they get ticked off and when we forget to do it my question to you though was about sleep so how do you know how much sleep is good sleep and then how do you know the type of sleep I've used those bands that say you know you're in deep sleep and you look like a roller coaster all night and then some

52:45nights you've got just one giant block that looks like someone just knocked chips the head and you were out cold for six hours so how do you know like what what are you what are you shooting for for that kind of stuff well there should be variability in your sleep you want to wake up feeling refreshed I mean that's one of the things that can sort of be your best predictor is how do you feel when you wake up another thing to look at is your tiredness level during during the day do you feel like you have to have caffeine to fuel you or could you

53:16get by without that cup of coffee that's one of the things where your body is sort of telling you how how how well rested it is another thing about sleep is you know some people will will have a have a scotch before bed or you know will use alcohol to help calm down and that works because alcohol is a sedative but it doesn't work in the sense that it also sedates some of that brain functioning that's actually so important in sleep so it's it's not a good I know that's not what you're asking but it's not a good tool and in terms of helping you to calm down to go to sleep so one

53:51other thing that I love though about what you decide the rose thorn rosebud is that that practice that third question of what are you looking forward to tomorrow is so important because it reminds us that the way that we feel right now isn't the way we're gonna feel forever though if we look forward to tomorrow we're realizing something new is coming a new feeling is coming a new experience is coming which is really important yeah cool practice all right we have time for one more question and I see a hand here

54:30sherry thank you for a great talk what would be your advice for those who are dealing with situations that are not stable that when you don't have like a defined schedule like in my case that would be kids that but I imagine that would be like some aspect of client work of something else how would you manage that so when you have when you have kids that you're trying to take care of and also respond to client to when you are not actually where where or like when you're going to have working time or not like when you can get things done or not it's a big source of anxiety agent for

55:07many people yeah well tell me if I'm answering your question correctly or not or if it makes sense but but one thing that that we do is sort of to make it predictable by having child care during certain hours when I know I'm not going to be responsible for the kids during that time but it sounds like it's the variable nature of what your clients are asking of you in my case this is kids I just I'm just trying to suggest other variants of what people can be facing in that regard when you don't have like predictable hours of work but you have work to be

55:41done yeah I think you have to make it predictable a little bit even if you are planning to work or predicting to work after your children are in bed or kind of knowing that there's a lot of flexibility in your schedule and you can respond when you need to but that there are certain times that I know from my own anxiety I need to know that I have some little piece of time carved out where I can respond to things yeah I think that makes it thanks very much

56:14[Applause]