Founder burnout

“Leaving a situation that doesn’t serve you is a strength, not a weakness, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” writes Karolina Szczur, in a post about founder burnout. As she notes, this is one of the more taboo topics in the conversation about burnout—for many reasons, among them a persistent and dangerous mythology that likens founders to small gods. But Szczur also notes that burnout can happen even in an environment that’s been carefully and thoughtfully built with an eye towards sustainability. This gets at something I’ve written about before—that to get to the bottom of our own burnout we have to identify and name its roots with more precision than the word “burnout” can provide. It may be overwork, or, as in Szczur’s case, it may be something else. But naming it is the first step to doing something about it.