I served in the US Navy for six years, spending three of those as a submarine officer. Even though I've never seen a shot fired, I've been in some hairy situations.
Steve's message is the same thing that I took from my experiences, and why my (non-Navy) colleagues always cite me as being "calm in the center of a storm". No matter how crazy or insane things get at work, I know there's no chance that if I screw up that 100+ people would die. It absolutely puts perspective on problems. :)
Not on the same scale, but I've found having screwed up badly in the past helps me keep my calm in the present. My favorite example: about twenty years ago I accidentally played a note during a grand pause (the entire orchestra silent) in the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth. In concert, at Hill Auditorium. That's one of the worst musical mistakes possible, in the one piece of classical music almost everyone knows, in what is almost certainly the nicest concert hall I will ever get to play in.
Ever since then when getting ready for a concert where I'm not the soloist, I can just tell myself "What can I possibly do wrong that would be worse than that?" and the tension goes away.
Music performance is an interesting analogy. It is simply impossible to learn music without making mistakes. One of the things that separates amateurs from pros is the ability to recover from a mistake, failure or disruption. Regardless of how great things sound in a practice room, the goal is the performance.
Its funny, failure in front of an audience is rarely fatal, but a huge fear for many.
That's the interesting thing about the human brain and our reactions to things. When compared rationally what happened to you seems trivial. But in your brain it was the worse thing in the world on the scale of a true disaster. Reminds me of situations where one has a health scare or a hypochondria before knowing the true details of their illness. The feeling you get is as if you are headed toward death and others sometimes laugh at how out of proportion a reaction is to the evidence at hand.
In my experience adventure sports like mountaineering can provide a similar sense of perspective. Even if things are going well, it's clear that decisions can have real physical consequences.
Training programs like the National Outdoor Leadership School can be a good jump start into the leadership aspects of those sports.
Really enjoyed this. I'm coming up on the one year mark for my design business and I've been stressed out about time, money, and everything in between. I've always told myself that nothing truly horrible can happen, but I relapse from time to time.
This, however, is an excellent way to ground yourself. Even though I've (fortunately) never had to be in the environment described here, this anecdote makes you appreciate what you have and where you are.
Talking of Steve Blank, "get out of the office" anecdote.
After studying philosophy & ancient greek, I wanted to know what real life was so I joined the Paris firefighter Brigade for a 5 years contract. One evening later on, working on my 1st startup, things were tough, a Friday night after dinner with my cofounders I wanted to go back to work. When putting the key in our office door, I looked at my hands and suddenly realized I had them both… and then that I had both of my arms, my legs and my brains were in my skull, (it's not necessarily that way, like I did see brains out of a skull (that's not what shocked me btw, but that strange little pinky cube 10 meters away on that street as we were going back to the truck). That was enough for me that night. Was I an entrepreneur suffering, struggling, risking my relationship and all my savings? (with that startup I eventually lost it all). No I was the lucky one. I did not open that door, turned around and went for a walk instead. I was alive. Hey! I still am :)
// In memory of four of my firestation colleagues, two, motorbike accidents (after 72 hours duty), one (a chief): heart attack 9 month after retirement, one dead in operation, rescuing the corpse of a missing speleodiver. http://www.plongeesout.com/portraits/portrait/maignan%20nico... he was 27 and the coolest, nicest guy you can think of.//
I'm not certain which I would feel worse about: making a mistake that kills me (as in, dead), or making a mistake that causes someone else economic ruin (unable to send children to a good education, for example).
It is that latter situation that keeps me awake at nights being an entrepreneur: that other people are relying on me... that in some way, I am responsible for them and their families... I often ask "am I worthy of this?".
As a veteran, I think I can safely speak for a majority of my compatriots when I suggest that most soldiers/airmen/sailors aren't afraid of making mistakes that get them killed, they are afraid of making mistakes that get others killed.
It's similar to your current fears, but still on a larger scale.
I'm all in favor of perspective, and against the misuse of military metaphors, but as a matter of fact, people CAN and DO die of entrepreneurship, as in this case, where I think it was widely suspected that entrepreneurship was a major contributing cause:
Im not going to comment or speculate on that individual situation but suicide is usually caused by a pattern of unhealthy cognition that can be changed. If an entreprenuer is considering suicide I would strongly advise them to tackle their depression and anxiety directly through professional therapy rather than dropping entreprenuership with the assumption it will cure their depression. In other words entreprenuership is not the direct cause of depression although it may somewhat exacerbate a person's depression who is more susceptible to it (just like any other lifestyle situation could).
I have a client (we build websites for photographers) who went from being a war photographer serving around the world (including Africa and the former Yugoslavia) to being a wedding photographer.
I told him how I didn't like photographing weddings because it was too stressful and tiring. He laughed and said "no one is going to shoot you, though"
Excellent post. From another point of view: we're all going to die eventually, nothing is scarier than that (excluding torture, but you get the idea). Compared to death, what is there to be afraid of in life?
I'm sure that you can die if you push yourself too hard and don't take care of your body. It's probably not as risky as flying into a war zone, but it's a risk nonetheless.
Yeah, but that's not exactly the same thing. We're all going to die from our bodies breaking down, old age, wear and tear, whatever, someday (car crashes, etc., aside, and assuming some of Ray Kurzweil's more fanciful ideas don't come to fruition soon).
But something that stands to "kill you right now" is a bit of a different beast to most of us. And in that regard, Steve is exactly right... put the startup in context: No matter how stressful it is, or what's going on, it's till not life and death in the sense of how most people use that term.
My own version of this comes from having been a volunteer firefighter for about a decade.. a period during which I had at least 3 experiences where I came very close to being seriously injured or killed (and was lucky enough to escape all 3 unscathed). I was also a 911 dispatcher during part of that same period, so I spent a lot of time up close and personal with literal "life and death" situations. When you've been there, it changes the way you look at the day in, day out stuff that goes on in business. Yeah, it's important... but it's never that important.
That's what I was going to say: it's not a mortal danger but we should not ignore the fact that plenty of people have committed suicide after the battling depression brought on by a failed/failing business.
That seems a bit like saying that eating a pie is dangerous because stabbing yourself with the fork can severely wound you. It's true, but since you aren't obligated to stab yourself with a fork when you eat pie, it seems odd to conflate the two. It's a bad decision all on its own.
Yes! I knew a 22 year old developer who had a heart attack. He had a super unhealthy lifestyle, was overweight, ate crap, worked insane hours and was super stressed out.
If he was 30 with those habits, he might have, indeed died.
I recently met a young woman working in the Mission at a tech company in customer support. She has cancer, and she's waiting another month for her health insurance to kick in.
The consequences of this stuff could actually be life and death. That said, the risk for most people is quite low.
I liked this post by Steve. However one thing to keep in mind is that people can suffer greatly in their mind as a result of their wrong actions, failures and the consequences of their mistakes. For many many years. While the current culture in SV (and on HN) celebrates success but also attaboy's some of the failures there is an entire other world out there (spouses, children, parents) that create pressure on stress on and individual that fails and only really care about success.
This is going to sound dramatic, but there are different dangers to the career game. War is obviously a lot scarier (and I literally have no idea how scary) but the kinds of fear are different.
When you're 18 and single, death doesn't scare you much because you don't have a spouse and kids. No one's being let down in that way. It will be rough for your parents, but teenagers usually aren't thinking about that, because we're programmed (either by genetics or culture; not sure which) to be a bit selfish at that age.
The effects of the career game (not just one business) are, on the other hand, deeply generational once you have kids and the die is cast. If you fuck it up, your kids won't have the connections and resources they need to thrive and they end up as mid-grade meat for society to munch on. This means they will have worse careers, and the effect propagate. The poor know what the stakes are, and the rich are terrified of being the one to drop the ball.
Dying at 18 when single means you don't have any kids. That's a lot less scarier to me than having kids and a mediocre career and having it affect them. That said, what would keep me from a war is not the fear of death, but the fear of injury, especially the psychiatric kind.
No, not really. Someone was prepared to fly a war plane wherever the hell most people figured they should in order to sleep safe and sound in California.
The honour of the professional soldier in a modern western democracy is that they don't pick and choose the wars they fight in, they trust the judgement of the rest of us to figure that out. A mercenary picks the people he shoots at.
This is why it is so incredibly important to not only choose the wars we fight in - and the governments that start them - very carefully, but to ensure that our servicemen and women are respected appropriately.
There may come a time when a particular war is essential for our survival. We better have the people and skills to win it.
I find this mysticism around the US military to be puzzling. I mean really, "The honour of the professional soldier in a modern western democracy is that they don't pick and choose the wars they fight in"? As opposed to every other soldier ever? And when it's a volunteer military and you sign up after a war is declared, that's choosing to fight that war.
I'm not American, so I have no idea about whatever "mysticism" you are talking about.
All soldiers should be honoured for the fact that they volunteer for very dangerous activities, usually will little understanding of when and where those activities will be.
Your point regarding post-war sign ups is valid, but like I said, if you want to fight wars you can just join blackwater et al. If you want to serve your country you can join the nation's armed forces. There is an element in public service in the soldier that should be commended.
I think that's a little dismissive. What I read in the post was not so much a justification for the war effort as putting trials and tribulations in relative perspective. War could just as easily have been replaced by any other situation that is literally life threatening.
We Sleep Peaceably In Our Beds At Night Only Because
Rough Men Stand Ready To Do Violence On Our Behalf
so it's really odd to find that a Vietnam War story follows. Of course this is orthogonal to the main point of the article (cf. the title), but it's still odd.
I would downvote it, not only for the historical egocentrism of claiming that somehow those fighting the Vietnam War were protecting united-statesian lives (as if the conflict ever was anything other than wrestling for political influence), but because it's inflammatory. What does the GP propose, that every single person of every country should go and fight a stupid war on another country? Or else what, be shameful of not being on the glorious warrior caste?
There are several memes in the United States psyche that are quite puzzling for the rest of us (non USans), military fetichism being one of the weirdest.
That said, turning the experience of making sure bombers can safely carpet bomb Vietnam into a coming-of-age story yielding uplifting thoughts about entrepreneurship steps into bizarre territory. Like an Ayn Randesque version of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
Steve's message is the same thing that I took from my experiences, and why my (non-Navy) colleagues always cite me as being "calm in the center of a storm". No matter how crazy or insane things get at work, I know there's no chance that if I screw up that 100+ people would die. It absolutely puts perspective on problems. :)