I took off all of 2023. Focused on health, family, travel… yada yada yada it was great. But during that time my brain atrophied, my work ethic diminished, and it got harder to focus. Despite a deep desire to build again, I've found that getting back to a grindset has been hard... It’s slowly getting better now, and I wanted to share some reflections on how I've reinvigorated myself. While I don't think there's anything novel in these ideas, for any people out there that are struggling to find the spark again, these things have worked for me. 1/ Understanding my own psychology for building was the foundation. Why I'm building has changed so much from when I was younger: from money and status to impact, adventure, and friendship. While this change in mindset will help me be more patient, long term maximizing, and selective about who I work with and what I work on, the tradeoff is that I've lost the urgency I used to have of, well, being broke. That's a big problem, because urgency is paramount for success. So a lot of my focus has been trying to trick my brain into feeling pressure and growing my brain's capacity to work. 2/ Growing capacity through adding friction to your life One of the most interesting realizations has been that the more friction I've added to my life, the more I'm able to produce. Too much free time has made me lazy, so taking it all away has proven to make me value time more. Changing my daily life to require more effort has also increased my capacity: - I stopping paying for all these privileged services I had like house cleaning, laundry, yard work, etc. - I started cooking ~every meal for myself and my kids. - Bike everywhere, no ubers This is like an extra 2 hours of lost time everyday, but paradoxically the extra busy-ness is making me perform at a higher level with the remaining time. Also I'm sleeping way better. 3/ Purposely creating social pressure (in the right amounts) As status maximizing animals, we are rarely unaffected by expectations. The more people I’ve told I’m building, the more pressure I've purposely created on myself to produce something. The balance and tradeoff here is that you don’t want to create so much status pressure that you make status maximizing decisions instead of product maximizing ones. A classic example is being afraid to show early prototypes and experimental ideas to people for fear of being judged to be performing way below expectations. The truth is at this stage in my career, I think people have high expectations of what I’ll be able to build, even though I haven't done a true 0 to 1 in 15 years, and that pressure can lead me to hold things back much longer than is optimal for speed to product-market fit. There's a point where I think too much social pressure is a negative, but better to just create it first then slow roll after imo. 4/ Be around people grinding Creative energy is infectious. Hustle is infectious. Competition is infectious. You have to surround yourself daily with that energy to sustain prolonged effort. - Joining @535Toronto brought community, physical proximity, and fun - Working out of public libraries full of students vs. coffee shops full of 30-somethings - Saying yes to more cold emails from first time founders, and seeking out and catching up with old colleagues There's probably a half-life for all these tactics, but I know over time my mind and body will adapt and it will become the new norm for me again. And while I'm not quite near 2019 Brandon levels of productivity, I'm encouraged to be on the way... To all those trying to reinvigorate themselves, happy building 🙏