✨ Cultivating a Calm Company ✨
A running thread of the most important things I have learned about building a calm company and being long-term ambitious as an entrepreneur. Let's go 🙏👇
Note: I plan to expand on each of these in short essay form. Subscribe to the @calmfund email list to receive them: tyler-tringas.ck.page/94b41c3e91
Chaos inevitably happens in business. Sometimes the answer is taming the chaos, sometimes you just need to get comfortable in the chaos.
There's value in aspiring to calmness, even when things are definitely not calm. It's the equilibrium we strive for, not a description of every moment.
The whole job of an entrepreneur is prioritizing the right things to do from an un-finishable todo list. Choose carefully.
Always look for the “lead domino”… the thing you can do that will make all the other things you have to do easier to accomplish. Credit @tferriss
Find your community, then lean on them. Everybody wants to see entrepreneurs win.
The Ben Franklin paradox: people who have already helped you are more eager to help more than those you have helped. Especially true for entrepreneurs. Keep asking.
Entrepreneurship is inherently an act of creative destruction, there is *no* safe well-worn path to success.
If the way was easy, the opportunity probably wouldn’t exist.
Escape competition through authenticity. credit @naval
Find your unfair advantage and lean into it relentlessly. When you feel lost, come back to this.
The way to get the best result in your Plan A is to keep investing in your Plan B.
Founders have signed up for a life of uncertainty. The only counter-move is creating optionality. Guard yours carefully and give it up reluctantly.
The most important life skill: use meditation to create space between external stimulus and your response.
Plan for the worst to reduce anxiety: visualize the worst outcome, write down your plan for what you would do, put that plan in a “break in case of emergencies” case, get back to work.
Don’t cling to the idea of your current business too tightly. It might fail. You’ll be fine.
Don’t set fixed goalposts. Set an ambitious pace, on a steep trajectory, that you can keep up indefinitely.
Be long-term ambitious.
Everything compounds. Do whatever you need to stay in the game for as long as possible.
Burn out is constantly stalking founders and will kill your business faster than anything else. Be vigilant against it.
Memento Mori.
Read the Stoics. Start with Seneca.
A fit body yields a calm mind. Exercise you enjoy and can stick to is better than anything else.
Healthy habits build on each other.
Your email inbox is other peoples' todo list. You have no obligation to it.
Time is your scarcest resource. Use your calendar to allocate what you’ll do for the day, not a todo list.
Energy and attention are actually scarcer. Allocate them carefully.
The ultimate productivity hack is remembering nothing you’re facing is actually that hard.
... and more to come. What do y'all think? Reminder: I'll be expanding on each of these here: tyler-tringas.ck.page/94b41c3e91