Lenny Rachitsky: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Yeah, exactly. And so I was working in a world where I was dealing with a lot of politics. I love mentoring people, and I had this massive team of 150 people that I barely know any of them. And so I'm not mentoring people either anymore. And I just felt like I'm working so hard on things that I actually don't enjoy. And so I'm like, I'm going to go work on flying cars, which is a whole other podcast too. So, that was my, okay, there was burnout in there. I know that was a fact, but some of those feelings or things that I felt my entire life that I uncovered that I thought was just burnt out, I was like, "Oh, actually at this point in my life, this point in my life and this point in my life, I felt this way too. And at those points I wasn't burnt out. And so I actually have deeper work to do here and deeper understanding of myself so that I can actually maximize my life and enjoy it." And because I'm going to keep working to some degree this hard. And I want to just make the most of that. I don't know if you mentioned this, but I imagine parts of those points were depression, not burnout. What have you found to be that line of just like, "Oh wow, this is a lot more serious than I'm just working way too hard?" For me, it's hard to describe, but I personally now can pretty cleanly tell the difference between exhaustion and depression. And it tends to tie to my broader motivations, not just my motivation to work. So, when I'm exhausted, I'll still show up to work, I'll still execute, I'll still do those types of things, but I'm going to go and if I can take an improv class, it's going to be a blast. I'm going to enjoy it and I'm going to love it. If I'm depressed, I won't go to that improv class. I'll just cancel it. I won't go to it. Or if I go to it, I'll go home immediately. One of the things I love about actual improv classes, is the community. Is, "Hey, let's all go grab a drink now." And this is a totally different group of people. It's not my family, it's not my work people, it's just me. And I wouldn't do that. And so it's kind of noticing where else is this impacting and to what degree and why, can help me understand what's going on in my life. Because more often than not, I can then take those feelings and it'll be like, "Oh, I've felt this way for three weeks now. I should think about this and dissect it a little bit." And so again, I'll spend time with my therapist. One of the tools that my therapist has given me is to open up with my friends and have these conversations with my friends. And so now I went from five, six years ago really just having my therapist or my wife to talk about this kind of stuff to, I don't know, I have five or six different friends that we're massively transparent with each other about this stuff, because the second I shared any of this with them, they shared it with me. And now we've become safe places to have those conversations where I can be like, "Hey, there's this thing going on." My dad has ALS and so he's been really sick and I've got three kids and I've got jobs and work and money and the market crash. And there's so many different things. It's like, okay, let me actually figure out which one of these things is causing this energy right now. And having many years of therapy now and those resources can help me get to that solution to get to that answer so that I can figure out, okay, what do I need to do right now? Do I need to actually take time for myself and dig deeper into these personal things? Do I actually need to change something with the shape of my career? Those types of things.…

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