The Problem With Never Being Done

A startup's work is never done — and that's a huge problem.

In reasonable parts of life, which startups clearly aren't, your workday starts and ends. You're told to do a job, you do it, and get paid on Friday. The correlation between your work, your progress, and your income is incredibly well understood.

But we don't have reasonable jobs, do we?

In our world, no matter how many times we cross a finish line, it's like we're instantly at the start of the next race, over and over and over. The moment we close a funding round, we're already out raising the next one. The moment we get a single paying customer, we need 100 more. Rinse, repeat.

How do you win a race that never ends?

The "Arrival Fallacy"

The problem starts when we actually believe the race will end.

There's a psychological term for this called the "arrival fallacy," and it basically means we believe that hitting a goal will deliver fulfillment, but every time we do, the goal just gets replaced with another goal.

Sound familiar?

I dealt with this for... decades. In my mind, when I was dead broke, if I could ever make enough money with my startup to pay my rent and basic bills (it was just over $500 in total), then I'd have "made it". So, then I did, and it never made a lick of difference.

Fast forward through the decades that followed, and I sold companies, then built more, then sold more. I bought houses, cars, and all of the things that (mostly guys) do with their big goal money. No matter how many times I "arrived," I was always right back at the start.

I found that after countless product launches, big hires, funding rounds, and every other event that we push for as Founders, the meter just kept resetting.

We're Taught to Despise Complacency

As if the arrival fallacy weren't enough, we triple down on it with our absolute disdain for complacency.

We're disruptors, the apex predators of complacent markets and products. The whole reason we exist is because someone, somewhere, got too comfortable doing what they have always done.

So the thought of even slowing down and enjoying a win is often foreign to us. We never hear about a startup being lauded for how they "just sort of hit profitability and chilled out" or a product that "is good enough, so everyone's happy."

In fact, even writing that made my fingers twitch a little!

When the very nature of our business is fundamentally Darwinian, even when we win, we've got a baked-in paranoia of losing it all to the next apex predator.

Do Stuff That Ends

So how do we get our "completion fix"? I found mine in the most unlikely of places. Years ago, I took up woodworking and became an obsessive carpenter. The first project I worked on was a simple workbench in my garage. At the time, I just needed a workbench, so I didn't think much of it. But after over-engineering the hell out of it for a few weeks, I finished it, and something magical happened.

I was "done." Like, totally, actually done. Something did not need to be worked on again.

I remember thinking, "I'm not sure what this feeling is, but it's like there's a sense of fulfillment that I've never had before." For once, I could see something through and not be compelled to do it again. That feeling of being able to put my startup energy into something that had a definitive outcome became insanely addictive.

I started talking to other Founders about what they did in order to feel "complete" or "done." And do you know almost none of them mentioned their startups? They all had something outside of work that gave them a sense of completion, whether it was cleaning their house, playing a sport, or cooking a meal.

We need that fix. When we run too long without completion, it makes us very, very angsty.

Plan for Marathons, but Finish Sprints

The startup game is a long-ass marathon that does not lend itself well to feeling complete. But perhaps the marathons aren't where we're going to get our completion. Maybe instead it's the sprints.

The sprints are those short-game wins that don't require more thought or effort. We build a workbench, finish a hike, or clean out the garage, and that's all there is to it. We feel complete, we feel fulfilled. We're not trying to take something IPO, we're just trying to cook a sweet meal.

While the strain of never completing things can compound, so can the relief of accomplishment. It's something we can dial into our everyday lives to constantly refill that well of angst.

So don't worry about the next thing you'll start — worry about the next thing you'll finish. It feels damn good.

In Case You Missed It

How Does a Founder Get Fired? Fired as the Founder — totally a dream or a nightmare come true?

Fighting Cynicism In Company Culture What are the root causes of cynicism? And how we keep it from contaminating our company?

The Downfall of Becoming Internally Focused There’s a huge possibility that your focus might change from managing customers and shipping products to hiring staff and doing reports — which could lead to a stall in your skills and growth as a Founder.