In February, a few months before beginning full-time work on HeartThis, I decided to get serious about going to the gym. As I entered my mid-twenties, I figured it was a good time to whip myself into shape in the hopes of maintaining a high level of fitness as I get older. I focused primarily on strength training with plans for later emphasis on mobility and cardiovascular capacity. Knowing I respond well to steady tangible progress, I adopted a linear progression strength training program and careful tracked all my workouts. As work on HeartThis started to ramp up, I realized that a lot of the lessons I learned from strength training were directly applicable to starting a company. I’ll share the three lessons I’ve learned that I have been of the greatest assistance for me as an entrepreneur so far:
Beware of information paralysis
There is an enormous amount of information available on how to train for strength – thousands of books, blogs, online communities, etc. I was particularly drawn to subreddits like r/fitness and r/weightroom that provide a constant stream of new information. There are articles examining in minute detail of all aspects of strength training — from the ramifications of different squat stances to the ideal timing of protein consumption. Eventually, I realized that research rapidly hits a point of diminishing returns. There are only a few basic underlying principles for strength training, and after learning those (which you can do in couple of hours) I was much better suited hitting the gym and getting on with the rest of my life rather than researching how to optimize my routine. This is directly applicable to starting a company as well: there is no substitution for action. Completing an appropriate level of research and due-diligence is important, but at some point you have to set the books down and do the work. I also find that I gain greater benefit from both strength training and entrepreneurship research when I take frequent breaks to focus on implementing what I’ve learned rather than continuously acquiring more information.
Routines get you through the bad days
I generally enjoy working out, but there are plenty of times when I don’t want to go do it for one reason or another — I’m tired, it’s late, I’m hungry, and so on. The key turning point for me was to bake gym time into my weekly routine. Eliminating the question of whether or not I “feel” like going on any given day means it just happens, the same way I get up and go to work every day. It was always easy to go when I was well rested and full of energy, but now even on bad days I consistently go because there’s no longer a decision to be made that’s susceptible to mood swings. Routines and processes serve the same purpose when building a new company. They’re your safety net on days when you’re feeling unfocused and unmotivated. I currently use a simple process that I call “Three Per Day” to keep track of what I should be working on at any given moment with minimal mental effort. On days when I’m feeling great, I don’t really need the system because I have no problem spending the extra mental energy required to think through all the tasks at hand and the best order to tackle them in. On bad days, it’s a lifesaver because having to sort through and prioritize a mountain of potential action items would completely derail my productivity.
Environment affects performance
In the past, I always worked out in college gyms or traditional fitness centers like 24hr Fitness or Crunch. Recently, when my lifts started getting heavier I decided to seek tips from an expert and drove out to a professional powerlifting gym. It was like night and day. Many of the people at the gym were monstrously strong. At least 2-3x stronger than anyone I’d encountered at regular gyms (for those of you into lifting numbers, we’re talking as high as 600lbs bench press and 900lbs squat/deadlift). The usual flirting, showboating, and rampant narcissism found in gyms was completely absent. Instead, there was a deep sense of camaraderie and support as everyone was 110% focused on self improvement and putting a brutal amount of effort into every lift. It was even a surprisingly diverse community. Alongside the competitive powerlifters was an older gentleman doing rehab work, a high school athlete training in her off season, and a few beginning lifters not much stronger than myself. My training advanced more in a single session at that gym than it had in the past month training 3x per week on my own. The environment showed me firsthand that I was nowhere near the limit of what could be achieved if I worked hard enough and inspired me to push myself that much harder. I try to apply this lesson to building HeartThis as well. My goal is to surround myself with people who are highly focused and far superior to me in some respect. Right now I’m looking to hire two new software engineers, and one of the criteria I use is that they have to be a substantially better engineer than I am. By creating an environment where greatness combined with mutual support and encouragement is the norm, I am confident that individual performance levels will be far higher than in an average company. Unfortunately, the powerlifting gym is too far away for me to attend regularly. I try to maintain the same level of focus and effort at the local gym, but I can tell that even being aware of the difference can’t quite make up for being in the actual environment.
I’ve also discovered that the benefits of working out on entrepreneurship are not a unidirectional. Starting a company has also improved my workouts! Sometimes when I’m feeling spent and ready to give up at the gym, I ask myself if I’m the type of person who just gives up when I’m tired, and what that would mean for my startup. I ask if I’m going to let down my coworkers, my investors, and myself by giving up just because building the company gets hard. Without fail that gives me the motivation to push through the rest of my workout as a way to prove to myself that I’ll be able to make it through the rough patches of starting a new company.
If you’re interested in what strength training program I use, I started with StrongLifts 5×5, and then advanced to my own modified version of Madcow 5×5. I highly recommend them for building raw strength, but if you’re going for aesthetics or cardiovascular fitness there are better alternatives.