the entrepreneurs guide to stressful times (a simple game that actually works)

Summary

a couple years ago I started getting tension headaches I’d never had before. nothing wrong medically. it was unmanaged stress from running too much at once. I built a game to fix it, and it still runs in the background of my week.

the premise is simple. stress isn’t the enemy. unmanaged stress is. every stressor needs a paired recovery, otherwise it accumulates and your body sends the bill.

I track six stressors (what scientists call hormetic stress):

• training
• fasting
• heat exposure
• cold exposure
• plant toxins (from things like green smoothies, coffee, etc.)
• psychological stress (work, deadlines, conflict)

for every stressor I’m running, I owe two recovery activities from this list:

• sleep
• hydration
• nutrition
• blood flow (walks, easy movement)
• sun exposure
• breath work

the goal isn’t zero stress. the goal is a balanced ledger by the end of the day. if I trained hard and crushed a stressful pitch, I owe four recovery deposits before I sleep.

it sounds simple because it is. but the people who burn out are almost always running stress with no system for paying it back.

Transcript

the burnout moment that changed everything

All right, let’s talk about how to gamify stress so entrepreneurship doesn’t eat you alive. We are all super stressed out as entrepreneurs or we’re putting stressors on our body. I never forget when I was trying to juggle being a new dad. I was I had the side hustle. I had the full-time job. I was exercising.

I was trying to do everything and all of it to a high level. I’m sure you’ve been there either in a similar situation trying to get your business up and off the ground or maybe you’ve been there in a similar situation when you’re just really grinding, you know through a hard time period in business and you’re just maxing out in all areas and I’ll never forget.

I started to get tension headaches. It’s something that I had never experienced before but it was like this massive rubber band around my head like I was just being squeezed. I was so confused and quite frankly a little bit scared of these tension headaches that I was getting and I didn’t really believe that the psychological and physiological stressors in my life could cause something like that.

Now I’m very aware of it today and how possible it is but I just didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to buy it. I was like no, I’m a hard charger. I’m type A. I can handle it. I can do this and I didn’t listen to my body. I just kept going down that path and things started to break down. I just wasn’t there.

what is hormesis? (and why it matters)

Like I started to lose my give a shit factor. I started to lose my presence with my family. Like I just started to lose in every area of life. I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted at business and honestly I wasn’t seeing the results anywhere. Fitness in any capacity, any part of my life and then I started to really gamify things and once I started to gamify and truly understand how stress works on the body, you know it started to get, things got a lot better.

I started to see more success, more presence with my family and I want to kind of go over how that works today because I originally did this for me and then I kind of introduced this idea or concept to athletes that I was coaching at the time to help them recover better because I just felt like a lot of people didn’t understand like the recovery process but now it’s just something that I realize is not for just fitness athletes you know or people into you know those who train hard.

It’s for entrepreneurs. It’s for everyone. It’s for humans if you want to be better. So let’s talk about the game real quick. So every morning you wake up and your score is zero. Then we’re going to track our stressors okay and we call the stressors hormesis. If you’re unfamiliar with hormesis it’s basically what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

That whole idea within reason. And so here are some of the areas that I think that you should be tracking hormesis or actually trying to do some of these areas. Now there are six different areas of hormesis or really five areas of hormesis and one additional thing I want you to track and this is something that you can just jot down in a note in your phone or on a piece of paper in your notebook.

the 6 stressors entrepreneurs pile on

It doesn’t have to be complex. So here are the areas. Whether or not you trained today is one. Did you fast today? Fasting is a stressor. So 12, 14, 16, 18 hour fast. Heat exposure like a sauna something that’s going to really stress the body. Cold exposure which a lot of people are doing these days.

You know cold tubs cold plunges that kind of thing. Plant toxins is a form of hormesis like if you were to swallow a bunch of garlic it’s actually going to stress your body but ultimately in the long term is going to be good for you. And then the last one is just whether or not you had a stressful day.

So psychologically. So that’s six. Those are the areas that you are tracking each and every single day. Now what you’re going to do is you’re going to mark each one of those off as a minus. Okay so minus one, minus two, minus three. And then you’re going to try and combat that with a recovery metric.

the 6 recovery habits you need to track

And here is the little formula for every one form of stressor or hormesis that you had in a day. You need two recovery modalities. And here are the ones that I recommend. All right so then we have six different areas of recovery and it’s going to be sleep, hydration, nutrition, blood flow, the sun or vitamin D and also breath work.

And so just to clarify on those a little bit more. So sleep is going to be seven to eight hours of sleep, seven to nine hours of sleep. Hydration 50% of your body weight in ounces every single day. Nutrition just going to be a solid amount of protein plus some micronutrients in every single meal. Blood flow 10 to 30 minutes.

This isn’t training. This is just like additional walking or you know some aerobic activity. Walking the dog, going for a walk, light run, zone two, whatever. Sun or vitamin D, getting out in the sunshine so you can kill two birds with one stone if you’re going for that walk or if you want a supplement with vitamin D.

It’s really just something that’s really good for you. And then breath work can be actually focusing on a specific breathing modality or doing meditation, something like that. And those count for one. Okay. And so if you have a hormesis activity, you have something that’s taking you down a notch, you need two of these to recover from it.

the stress/recovery math that keeps you balanced

That’s the formula. So technically it’s minus two per hormesis plus one. That’s ultimately what I meant. And so if I trained really hard today, I need to make sure that I get enough sleep and then I also hydrate. And now I’m just back to baseline, right? I’m back to zero. And then you’re like, well, I do all of those things every single day.

I’m going to go train. I’m going to do cold exposure. I’m going to fast. I’m going to do heat exposure. I’m going to do plant based toxins and I’m going to have a really stressful day as an entrepreneur. How do I recover from all of those things? The answer is you can’t. You can’t. Like that’s what I’m trying to get across to people.

What they don’t understand is like you can’t actually recover from all the stressors if you do all of them. So that’s what you’re keeping in mind each and every single day. If you are the person who’s trying to implement all these habits. If I had a really hard day, like a super stressful day as an entrepreneur or just a parent, whatever.

why you can’t recover from everything

And then I also trained really hard today. I now need for four recovery modalities just to get back to baseline. So I’m going to need to sleep. I’m going to be doing some meditation. I’m going to hydrate and make sure that I’m getting all of my meals in. And now I’m just back to baseline. If I add one more stressor, I’m going to have to do all of the things that I need to recover.

And then if I do one more, now I know I’m going in the negative. OK, and it’s OK to balance these out. But if you start tracking this over a week and I track it each and every single day in a note. And so I track this to see where I’m at. And if I’m like, OK, well, you’re dipping down like a little low.

You’re digging the hole like let’s get back out of the hole. That’s what I’m thinking of consistency over a week. And then if you’re getting good habits of doing this daily, you’ll realize, OK, I can only take on so much today. Now, some people might not think that this is how you need to go about it.

how to stay in the game as an entrepreneur

They’re like, no, you can just do it all. But I’m telling you, I’ve been there and you can’t for the long term. Maybe it works out for a year. Maybe it works out for two years, three years. But I’m 15 plus years into the entrepreneurial game. Things are pretty well balanced for me. I don’t overly stress out.

I spend a lot of time with my family. I still get a lot of shit done for my businesses and I’m nowhere close to the burnout level. And the reason that is, is because I play this game of stress and recovery, stress and recovery so I can stay in the game as an entrepreneur. So it’s a very simple game.

You definitely should play it. If you can just gamify your stress a little bit, you’re going to be able to stay in the game longer. And that’s the only game anyone’s really playing as an entrepreneur.