Leaning Towards Joy
Bringing 5% more joy into your work will transform your experience of it
If you put a plant next to a window, slowly, over time, the leaves will turn towards the light. As the plant grows, it will bend slightly towards the angle of incidence of the sun.
Some plants will turn their heads dramatically within days. Others will take years to noticeably shift towards sunlight.
Where is your sunlight?
The things we put our attention on inevitably grow. If you focus on one friendship over others, you’ll deepen more quickly with that friend than with others. If you focus on one part of your business over the others, that will be the part that will be more likely to grow.
One of the patterns I often see amongst the founders I coach is a tendency to do the things we think we should do for our business because we see other founders doing them. Or we hear from our investors we should do them. Or (this is so common) the YC partner told us to, based on a short conversation with limited context on the business and the founder.
And we contort ourselves in these ways where we stop doing the things we love and we start doing the “shoulds” and then we lose sight of the reason we started this in the first place. Because we liked it. Because it was fun.
Starting a company is hard enough. You can do it in extra hard mode, where 80% of your day you force yourself to do things you don’t enjoy doing and where you live in a state of heightened anxiety, stress, cortisol, and/or fear, where every decision seems life-or-death, where everything has so much weight. Or you can do it in just basic hard mode, where you do the hard work of starting a company, but over time you find people who enjoy doing the tasks you hate, and you get to spend more and more of your time on the things that bring you joy. Finding joy in your work is a choice. It’s your choice.
When I see founders really struggling (and wow have I been there), I ask them what would make this just 5% more fun. What could we do to introduce just a little bit more joy into your day?
Were you a deeply technical software engineer who found himself a CEO and miss the fun of getting to hack on the next product? Ok, block out some time on your calendar and go do that. Did you used to spend more time with your friends and family, enjoy traveling, love laughing and playing, and find yourself without enough time to do those things? Make changes. Go do those things.
It’s actually quite simple.
When founders are at the end of their rope, every action feels like pushing a boulder uphill, and even the easy tasks seem hard. Find a way to cultivate more joy.
Right now I am offering complimentary coaching deepdives to up to 3 founders. Reach out with the subject line “Joy” to lunarayemail@gmail.com.
Learn more about my coaching here.