#107 | "It's all relative, isn't it"
‘It was easy to size other players up in the NBA. I found that a lot of guys played for financial stability. Once they got that financial stability, the passion, the work ethic, and the obsessiveness was gone. Once I saw that I thought, “this is going to be like taking candy from a baby. No wonder Michael Jordan wins all these fucking championships.”’ — Kobe Bryant
‘Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.’ — Daniel Kahneman
A Stena Line ferry crosses from Cairnryan, southwest Scotland, towards Belfast. From the front deck, you look out across a blotched water-coloured sky that slips to wet hills, which then tumble into the ink-black sea. A fog descends within minutes of leaving port — then the land disappears altogether. This crossing attracts an eclectic crowd (and I'm happy to be among them). One passenger has already said I look like a "young Cat Stevens". I guess that's a compliment. Another told me that more smokers have died from the cold due to the smoking ban than from covid.
I chatted with the barista, a fifty-year-old man with warped tattoos betraying some heartbreaking story (my projection). The wind was picking up as linesmen hauled the ropes in, so I asked the barista if it might be a rough crossing. He said, "no… well… it's all relative, isn't it". He's been working on the route for twenty years, and "hell, I've seen rough seas; today will be nothing." He said the worst boats are the catamaran ferries. There's no smoother trip in steady conditions, but when the winds whip up the Irish Sea, it's "god awful on those bleedin' things".
I've been wondering why startups are emotionally consuming and why the discipline to maintain mental health is essential. And our barista's comment, "It's all relative, isn't it" was my answer.
Running a startup is relatively hard because it's relatively new all the time. It surprises us. In life, we are comforted by habitual patterns: "duck, duck, duck, duck…". We are always shocked by "…goose". Starting something new is all geese—a proverbial gaggle of them. And when things change quickly, there's nothing to become accustomed to. Everything is relatively new, weird and complex.
Our views are relative to our context. For example, I am relatively conservative, and in the U.K., I'd typically vote as such, but in the U.S., which is skewed further right, I'd vote Democrat. Moreover, our ideas are born out of one (limited) experience. Our past constrains us. Everything we perceive is one version of events; it comprises 0.002% of the reality of an event. Others have another story. Starting a new thing floods us with relatively new things. And because we only know a tiny percentage of the knowable world, new information can shock us disproportionally.
If things are going well, there is no steady state. Scarcely a day feels unimportant (of course, in reality, it often is). Each week feels like another set of critical events that will propel the project to new heights. However, if a startup stops confronting new challenges, it's probably dead.
Finding stability somewhere is vital. My most successful friends in startups think a lot about what they eat, how they spend their time, and what they do and don't do. Very few ever get drunk, perhaps not because it's not fun (it is) but because it's destabilising. Inward stability is necessary for the face of outward instability.
It might be tiresome for those close to founders, who must listen to each week's raw excitement, uncertainty, and newness. But half of the challenge is constantly pushing at the envelope of possibility. In essence, it's an excellent problem to have, but it can lead to a feeling of continued re-invention that has no end. (I like this feeling — it excites me).
Because of my lack of nautical experience, a ferry crossing abuses me more than our friend, the barista; he's seen it all before. It's relatively rough for me, but on the return journey, it might feel calmer. Through introspection and repetition, we can improve at riding rough seas and looking uncertainty in the eyes.
My week in books
The New New Thing by Michael Lewis. A fun read. We follow the entrepreneur Jim Clark through his unlikely life. A quote:
‘Clark liked to say that human beings, when they took risks, fell into one of two types, pigs or chickens. “The difference between these two kinds of people,” he’d say, “is the difference between the pig and the chicken in the ham-and-eggs breakfast. The chicken is interested, the pig is committed. If you are going to do anything worth doing, you need a lot of pigs.”’
Live well,
Hector