My client and the Lovable founder pitched on the same stage a while ago. Loveable just hit $500M AR. My client has 100 paid clients.
He told me he is starting to wonder what the hell he was doing. Should he just chuck his company and start over? Maybe this one is just broken.
My man needed to learn the difference between eustress versus distress.
Distress is the negative stuff that forces us to live in fear. It floods the brain with poisonous chemicals and when we live their for years it creates awful outcomes.
Eustress is the good stress. It's what elite athletes feel right before a competition and Yo-Yo Ma feels as he walks onto the stage. It's the competitive edge that sharpens performance instead of dulling it.
The same input -- what happened if I screw this up -- creates two completely different physiological responses.
If looking at Lovable makes you say "that's going to be me someday" and you go back to work with more energy than you had this morning... that's eustress. Stare at them all day. Pin their press releases to your monitor.
If looking at Lovable makes you say "what the fuck am I even doing here" and you spend the next hour staring at the ceiling... that's distress. It will not save you. It will not motivate you into a better company. It just sucks your drive while your runway burns.
Same competitor. Same headline. Same ARR. Two polar opposite outcomes depending on what it does to YOU.
The things that boost your performance, do more of them. The things that don't, chop them out of your life.
Including the doom-scrolling.
Especially the doom-scrolling.
(This is mainly just a note to myself. Physician, heal thyself.)