Patterns, Not Hours: How I Avoid Burnout

As a founder, you cannot escape work. Work is part of your life. Luckily I love my work and I would not really consider it work - I try to only do the things I love doing, so it becomes play rather than labour. I think that is the only way to be in work mode around the clock without burning out. You have to genuinely love what you are doing.

I sometimes think about what life was like when I had a normal job. When I worked for someone else. When I could finish at the end of the day and forget about work until the next morning. Weekends and holidays completely disconnected, focused on family and things I enjoyed.

But here is the thing - even when I worked for someone else, I was always thinking about work. Always thinking about how we could improve things, what else we could be doing to make the business better. I cared about those businesses as if they were my own, even though I had no ownership in them.

Maybe that is just how I am wired.

Burnout Is Not About Hours

Here is what I have come to understand about burnout: it is rarely about the number of hours you work. It is the result of patterns you do not interrupt.

Stress accumulates when you fail to notice what is building up. Overwhelm happens when problems remain unresolved in your mind, piling up without processing. That is what leads to burnout - not the work itself, but the mental loops that never close.

A few years ago, I often got stressed over smaller things. When things in the business were not going the way I wanted, or when I could foresee a challenge coming that I needed to act on, I would feel it in my stomach. That physical sensation of stress.

I have learned to manage that. I have learned to let things be and only act on the things I can control. And if I am not in a position to act on something I can control for whatever reason, I take it out of my mind and bring it back when it is time to focus on it.

Do Not Sweat the Small Stuff

I have always been able to let small things slide, and I have gotten much better at this with time. I genuinely do not sweat the small stuff anymore. That is probably one of the most important lessons I have learned over the years.

What do I mean by this? It is about zooming out.

If something happens in your business that you do not want, rather than stressing out or feeling uptight about it, zoom out and think: in the grand scheme of things, is this a big deal? Is it going to put us out of business? If yes, then zoom out further - am I going to be able to provide for my family? Keep zooming out until your problem has been reduced to the ridiculous.

I keep asking questions about the problem whilst looking at it with a wider lens each time. Once the problem seems small and simple at a wide angle, I mentally solve it and then zoom back in to see how I would solve it at the next level of detail.

Cloud-to-Ground Thinking

Zooming out is central to how I think. It allows me to avoid sweating the small stuff, but also to think critically about complex problems. Often in business, I need to look at things from a micro lens - the specific function, the particular bug, the individual customer issue - but then also from a wide angle lens.

I call this cloud-to-ground thinking.

I find it useful when building apps. I will be deep into making sure a function handles a request correctly, then have to zoom out to think as a user would think when using my app. Is the onboarding flow effective? Who is the target market? What does the whole experience feel like from above?

It defeats stress too. When I am stressed about a problem, I zoom out. I start thinking of the problem as if I was in the clouds looking down on it. Two things happen: the problem does not seem as serious anymore, and I can often see a solution - or at least a solution - when looking at it from up high.

I also use this practice with my own life. I zoom out to look at my life from when I was born to when I will die. I can see the progress of what I have achieved so far, then I try to envision what the rest of it looks like. It is a mental check to see if I am on track and if I am becoming the person I want to be when I am on my deathbed.

The person you think you want to be now may be different to the person you would like to be in five years time. And that is fine - that is evolution. The important thing is to keep evolving and avoid stagnation.

One Thing at a Time

My to-do list is massive. More gets added to it than gets ticked off, and that is fine. I am adding things myself - it is not like I have a boss loading tasks onto me. I treat my reminders app as a second brain.

Every few months, I go through all my reminders. I either tick them off because they are complete, or I categorise them into sections: apps I want to build, tasks on current projects, marketing ideas to explore, audiobooks to listen to, research to do. I have a collection called "Long standing tasks" where I dump items that I want to do but are not urgent. A long-term storage place for nice-to-haves.

But my active to-do list is busy. As CEO of We UC and a founder responsible for over 100 people across all my businesses, I deal with the worst problems in the company. Things that nobody else can deal with. Critical aspects of the business that others would find very stressful.

My policy for dealing with important matters is: one thing at a time.

If I stop and think about everything I need to do and try to process it all at once, I would probably have a panic attack. So my mental trick is to deal with one thing at a time. I prioritise based on three questions:

1. Delegation check - can I delegate this to someone else?
2. What is the urgency of the item?
3. How motivated am I to complete the item?

I prioritise all my tasks based on these three categories.

What Happens When I Get Overwhelmed

Unavoidably, I sometimes get overwhelmed. I feel the pressure of managing everything I am doing and what I am trying to achieve. A feeling of pressure hangs over me and I find it difficult to focus, difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I get swamped by self-doubt and I feel down.

I am now able to identify these moments quite well. Even though I feel this way, I recognise that I feel this way because of factors that have taken me to that place - normally triggered by something that has happened during the day, or news that I have received recently.

I know that ultimately, a good night of sleep and a good workout the next morning is the best medicine for this. I have not yet had an instance where I feel overwhelmed or stressed or in a mood of despair, where I have had a good night of sleep and a good workout the next morning and not felt at least a bit better.

Normally I gain clarity either during the night or the next morning. In more severe cases, I gain clarity within a few days - again, either at night, during a workout, or often in the sauna after a workout.

Being overwhelmed is manageable if you deal with it. That is how I avoid what I consider could lead to burnout - by not letting unresolved issues pile up in my mind.

The Spouse Check

Touching on family - my wife Danielle is very good at telling me when I am going a bit too deep into something. When my focus is becoming an obsession with a particular topic.

Recently she pointed this out with my obsession with building my content creation system and process. I took note and it was a mental cue to rebalance - spend more time with the family and be more present at home. Last time this came up was when I was building the Scheduler app, which I vibe coded in my free time, mostly meaning early mornings, evenings and weekends, sacrificing family time.

The thing is, when I am obsessed with something, it is all I can think about. As I go about my day, I get ideas constantly. It could be when I am working out, in the sauna, in the office, eating, showering, or even sleeping. When I get an idea, I have to write it down. If it is a good one, it resurfaces and I act on it later.

Having someone who can give you that external perspective - who can tell you when you are going too deep - is invaluable. It is a pattern interrupt from outside yourself.

The Real Secret

So how do I balance being in work mode constantly, acting on ideas when they feel right, being responsible for over 100 people, maintaining a happy family life, and keeping fit and healthy - all without burning out?

The answer is not complicated. It is about noticing the patterns that create stress and interrupting them before they compound.

Sleep well. Move your body. Deal with one thing at a time. Zoom out when problems feel overwhelming. Listen to the people around you when they tell you something is off. Let the small stuff slide.

Burnout happens when you let unresolved mental loops pile up. When you try to hold everything in your head at once. When you forget that most problems look smaller from a distance.

I design my life so work does not consume me. Not by working less, but by working differently. By recognising that the feeling of overwhelm is a signal, not a permanent state. By trusting that clarity comes - usually after rest, usually after movement, usually after giving the mind space to process.

That is how I stay in work mode without burning out. Not through discipline or willpower, but through patterns that keep me grounded.