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The Big Lie

A member of Havard Medical School's Department of Psychiatry offers five strategies to avoid burnout.

Burnout, and how to beat it. Five strategies from a leading expert on entrepreneurial stress

The big lie is not that the check's in the mail. The big lie is the myth that the start-up phase of a company is the bad part, the struggle -- that once the cash starts coming in, satisfaction and happiness follow.

Of course, entrepreneurs face stress in the early years of getting their companies off the ground. But just as companies pass through phases of growth, so, too, do company builders pass through predictable phases of a stress cycle. That includes feeling invigorating stress (what psychologists call "eustress") as well as a range of detrimental emotional states that go from disappointment that the thrill is gone to outright depression. The key to preventing the downside of success is to understand that it is predictable, governed by rules, and, most important, preventable.

During the start-up phase, you're essentially working to gain self-esteem; you're working for bragging rights. Daring the devil (and those naysayers who say you are crazy) and beating him makes you feel smart, confident, and powerful. And those feelings are the keys to psychological success.

The start-up mantra goes like this: Got no business, got no cash, don't have time, have no management team. Those are the challenges. You can be overworked and physically exhausted. But you have no difficulty getting up and going to work, because you feel energized and full of the belief that you have a better idea, system, or sense of how things should be. Do you know any well-established company that doesn't romanticize those start-up days? That's because, contrary to popular opinion, on the entrepreneurial journey, getting there is all the fun.

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Here are the psychological phases you should anticipate throughout your entrepreneurial career:

· Starting up. In the beginning you suffer appropriate trepidation; only a fool would ignore the risks inherent in launching a new business. But as you get moving you feel fresh-scrubbed optimism: you're too naïve to know how hard it's going to be, and you're in a good psychological state as you experience the joy of learning how competent you are.

· Building the business. Over time you develop a sense of accomplishment and commitment to your enterprise. We naturally stay devoted to those people and things that enhance our self-esteem. Despite ups and downs, eventually you'll reach a point of optimal competency. The challenges posed by your business are essentially equal to your abilities or skills. That is but one moment in time, but it's one to savor. You are not threatened by challenges that are too great, nor are you bored and grossly underchallenged by too much of the same old thing.

· Reaching maturity. After you've attained a measure of success, after you've passed that optimum point of competency, you typically begin shepherding the business rather than creating, developing, or expanding it. And there's the rub, because a sense of creating is the core psychological gratification that you as an entrepreneur are after. Whatever your expectations -- and the expectations of others -- be certain that when you've attained the pinnacle of success you've been striving for, your sense of challenge, creativity, and drive will cease to exist.

That's the point at which you're at the greatest risk of being scorched by success. It's here that you must avoid passively accepting your success. Remaining unchallenged is the main cause of psychological burnout in an entrepreneur. In a word, challenge will prevent the malaise that comes when you stop striving for success. The key, however, is to understand how you can incorporate appropriate challenge into your life.

For the entrepreneur, a novel challenge could be a diversification of some sort, perhaps a new product line or a new marketing approach. When you diversify you create feelings of eustress -- the good stress -- by seeing just how high you can raise that proverbial bar. As long as you feel capable of making the jump, the stress will be revitalizing. Inevitably, however, the cycle repeats itself. After diversification you'll again reach that moment of optimal competence and optimal challenge. Eventually, you'll reach a point where diversification in your company will not be enough. Unless you figure out how to put challenges into your life on a regular basis, burnout will follow.

There's a fundamental distinction between stress and burnout. Stress comes from facing demands that are beyond your sense of competence. Burnout, on the other hand, comes from facing goals that are too readily achieved or have already been met, which results in boredom or perceived worthlessness. The burnout mantra goes like this: Been there, done that, seen it, felt it, had the thrill.

Because people often fail to distinguish stress from burnout, they frequently try cures that aggravate rather than relieve those conditions. Stressed chief executives, exhausted by confronting threats, need a two-week vacation. Burned-out CEOs, bored and doubting that they still have the vitality they once had, go stir-crazy on a "relaxing" vacation. Those CEOs need a challenge. (Challenge is not all good, of course. Just as too much oxygen can kill you, too much challenge can kill as well. You also risk threatening your self-esteem if you reach too far, too fast, and too often.)

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Unfortunately, burned-out CEOs don't readily accept the notion that new challenges are critical. Instead, they offer two rebuttals. The first is "If I really love the business, why can't I continually diversify products and services within it?" You can, but the chances of your getting satisfactory challenges from your company for an indefinite period of time are not great.