I needed a reminder today that things sometimes get tough. It is important to understand that everybody ‘fights their own demons’ and you are not alone. Everyone around is struggling, sometimes you see this, but most of the time you don’t. 

To be brutally honest, I’m a big overthinker. I go through all possible and impossible scenarios in my head. This often leads to me spending too much time on some problem, almost getting to the state of paralysis, but sometimes this does pay off. I remember years ago, I worked on a migration of a service, I simply could not get to sleep before checking each and every edge case. The thing worked perfectly, but how much mental capacity it had consumed was probably overboard.

Even the most successful founders and people around have similar struggles. I just finished reading “Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making” by Tony Fadell, creator of iPod and Nest. I’m bringing it in this context because there are chapters on personal growth, struggles of building something, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, and rising again after making those mistakes. Fadell doesn’t pretend the anxiety and stress aren’t there. Instead, he offers a framework for navigating the chaos. Here are some takeaways:

Killing Yourself for Work

One of the chapters in the book talks about the difference between ‘working hard’ and ‘killing yourself’, one coming from passion and being driven to build great things, and another coming from fear (being terrified of what happens if you don’t work hard). I found for myself that I do like to work hard, but also need to be honest about the source of that drive. If passion that’s sustainable, if fear then it is not.

Failure is the Data; Fear of being wrong

Fadell talks about his time at General Magic as a spectacular failure that taught him everything. It reminded me that my ‘overthinking’ is really just fear of being wrong. I am often fixated on avoiding mistakes, but the only people who do nothing make no mistakes. Failure is just data for the next iteration.

Data vs. Opinion; Avoiding “analysis-paralysis”

My paralysis usually comes when I’m looking for data that doesn’t exist. The book simply says that sometimes data isn’t there (yet) and it is ok to bet on your intuition and just move (“just do it” as Nike’s slogan says). Overthinking without data or with made up data is just spinning wheels and wasting energy.

The Crisis Point

The author argues that any meaningful project will have a ‘Crisis’ point. I realized that in my career I had so many projects where it really felt that things were about to fall apart only to find a way to still ship things in the end. Stress during those times is normal, it is just part of the process. If you had zero stress, then it is likely you were not pushing yourself or your team outside of the comfort zone.\

Conclusion

There are so many other great chapters in the book, like “Why Storytelling”, “Assholes”, “Heartbeats and Handcuffs”, “How to spot a great idea”, and so many more, but one lesson I’m taking from the book today is that the path of success and growth is always hard, often filled with failures, stress, and hard work. If you are driven by passion and wanting to make a difference, then push for this, but if your hard work is coming purely from fear, it might be a good time to take a break and see what you can learn.