The concept of “Load Management” has become popular in the NBA. The theory is that load management helps athletes reduce the percentage likelihood of sustaining a serious injury during a season and that the practice helps star players preserve energy and output for critical games increasing their impact over the course of a long season.
This idea dovetails with something I saw firsthand as a founder and was reminded of as I coached numerous founders heading into the end of 2024 and who were clearly running on fumes.
Startups are a walk, run, sprint, which means you need to know how to pivot and shift from one cadence to another as your startup and personal health requires it.
Why Founders Need to Load Manage:
Hitting burnout as a founder is both personally destructive and destructive to your startup.
I can speak from first hand experience that burnout operates like a frog in boiling water. I didn’t know I was burning out until one day I crashed. As a result, my output dropped, and when this happens to a leader sitting on top of a large team, the results are disastrous, causing that entire team and the momentum of your startup to grind to a halt along with the leader.
“Down Shifting” is a term I picked up from the work of Steve Schlafman which highlights an important skill that founders need in their repertoire, which is the ability to intentionally slow down at moments when this is possible, in order to re-energize and re-harness your capacity to take on large future challenges.
Down Shifting is a form of load management and can be done in small micro-moments during an intense day (as a long-distrance runner might do during a particular period of a race) as well as done in more substantial ways (similar to a distance runner taking time to rest between events).
How to Downshift as a Founder
Accept that you can’t sprint forever. The first step to effectively down shifting is accepting that this is a healthy and important practice. That running full speed until you crash may feel good in the short-term but is a liability in the long-term.
Micro-downshifts. If you learn how to make small, micro-downshifts, throughout your day (going from a sprint to a walk) often you can avoid crashing which results in needing a larger break. Here are some practices that CEOs and founders I work with have employed successfully. The trick is finding the strategy that works for you and your unique situation.
End meetings 10 minutes before the hours. Use the time between meetings to slow down, reflect, and take notes or actions on anything covered in your last call.
Maintain small, but critical workout routines. No matter how busy your days are, finding time for a 30-minute workout (even if it’s a slow jog) is powerful way to ensure you aren’t building up physical and mental health debt.
Carve out time in the middle of your day, to pause, slow down, and reflect. Whether that is via meditation, journaling, or some other tool that helps you shift and re-energize for the rest of your day.
Select a Top Goal as you scale. One of the times I see founders burning out from lack of load management most frequently is during hyper-scale. Too often founders hold on to all their old responsibilities while taking on new ones. A critical way to avoid falling into this trap is to use the “Top Goal” framework popularized by Matt Mochary. Pick a top goal each week, commit to completing this goal (using deep work time to drive it forward) and force yourself to say no to other motions that may seem important but prevent you from completing your Top Goal.
When off be fully off (or 99% off). Here’s a scenario I hear about frequently. A founder or CEO client is running on fumes. They have a much needed vacation approaching. They know that the most important thing for them to do is to take this time to recharge. Instead, work piles up and they spend the entire trip not fully on or fully off and emerge from the break more exhausted then they were before it. Sound familiar? A good solution is to see this trap and to do some pre-work that enables you to get the time off and load management you need. This includes:
Communicating that you will be off when you’re off, which makes it easier to commit to this decision.
Recognizing that there may be essential projects you need to work on during a break. In this case, scheduling blocks of time while on vacation that is sufficient to complete this ONE urgent project, doing this in a focused and intentional manner, and committing to doing nothing else.
Macro downshifts — pick the right amount of time to take off. If you think of mental health and burnout as similar to physical health and injuries it’s easier to recognize that different severities of exhaustion require different lengths of healing. A sprained ankle requires a different recovery plan than a torn ACL. Similarly, as a founder/executive as you reach various breaking points, you should consult a coach or expert to help you assess the right length of time you need to take off to return to your role fully focused and effective. Similar to what can happen to an athlete with an injury who returns too soon, if you are burnt out, and need a week off but only give yourself a day, you are only setting yourself up for a bigger crash in the future.
Results:
As mentioned, I had a number of clients who were heading into the holidays running on fumes, and used the holidays as an opportunity to take a multi-day downshift. Here are some of the results they reported from having done this:
Interpersonal issues resolved themselves. One co-founder client of mine, returned from a week of vacation to find that the co-founder issue they and their co-founder had been banging their head against had resolved itself. Time away took the urgency and stress out of the dynamic and allowed the work we had done on the issue to integrate into their relationship. They came back from the holiday with less frustration and renewed focus.
Clarity. A CEO client of mine came back from the holidays, with clarity on a long-standing sales issue they had been circling on. The time off allowed the right solution to become clear in their mind and their energy shifted to excitement when they returned to the office with a clear path forward.
Avoiding a crash. As mentioned, when I was a young founder, I did a terrible job of load management. I remember, the day after we raised our Series A, I vented to my co-founder about 10 different issues we now needed to address. This stemmed from insecurity and inability to sit in the uncertainty that is a constant at any high-growth startup. By not allowing myself to enjoy the good times, I was less equipped to level-up and handle the extended high-intensity periods (fundraising, pivoting our B2B product, etc.) that were waiting for us on the road ahead. It’s critical to nurture different of your identities as a founder (relationships, health, and more) when you have the space to do so and no one will tell you to do this.
Is downshifting and load management something you do as a founder / leader? How do you approach this process?
