Filling up your buckets
How do you make sure you are emotionally resilient enough to cope with startup life?
Try thinking of your personal character traits as buckets to be filled or emptied. Each trait, such as focus, empathy, confidence, and resilience, is its own bucket.
At any given time a bucket is full, empty, or somewhere in between.
Take extraversion, for example. I’m an introvert, so my extraversion bucket runs close to empty most of the time. I can turn it on when I need to, but it drains fast and takes effort to refill.
If you try and draw down on a bucket that’s already empty, you’re not going to have a good time.
Now think about emotional resilience. That’s a bucket too. It needs to be tended, loved, and monitored so it’s full when you need it most. No one is emotionally resilient 100% of the time, but when you’re building a startup, it can be the difference between reacting and leading.
So how do you keep your emotional resilience bucket full? You invest in systems before you need them. You build good habits.
High-quality habits compound throughout the life of your startup, ensuring your emotional resilience is continually replenished. It will then be ready when you need it.
Some great systems that might work for you:
Prioritise 8–9 hours of quality sleep.
Move your body every day for at least 30 minutes.
Find a sounding board, such as a coach, a peer group, or a loved one, to help you process what’s happening.
Reflect often. Journaling helps (hit me up if you want some prompts inspired by stoicism).
Build calm into your routine. Meditation, mindfulness, or just pure silence. Whatever works for you.
Protect time with family and friends. No phone. No laptop. Just presence.
Every founder eventually faces moments where the stakes rise faster than they can adapt. The fundraise, the outage, the board meeting gone sideways, or that VP of sales who just isn't delivering.
If you’ve built systems over time, you’ll be ready. If you wait until you’re under stress, it’s too late. You will have to wait until the moment passes before you can begin again.
Build your systems early and keep your bucket full. Because the moment you need emotional resilience most is exactly when you won't have time to build it.