There was one month while I was building Shezaar when I almost crashed.
I worked every single day for four weeks. We had just hired 2 engineers from India and my calendar was full. My inbox was overflowing. I was jumping between product, people, sales, user research, operations, admin, content, and whatever had decided to “catch fire” that day.
But, at the end of the month, when I did an audit for what actually moved, I had nothing.
Being a solo founder keeps you busy. But it comes from working on a hundred different functions, at the same time.
Because every job is your job. You might have a team handling the actual execution, but the buck stops at you.
So everything feels urgent. ALL. THE. TIME.
So, over time, I picked up five habits that have helped me avoid such months.
1. Treat Your Attention Like A Limited Resource
The first thing I learnt as a solo founder was that there will always be a thousand things I could do.
But I don’t have to do all of them.
At least not all at once.
At any given moment you could be looking at distribution, content, partnerships, product, hiring. And all of it is real work. But your attention is the one thing you cannot buy more of. So trying to accomplish the whole web of tasks is how you end up moving nothing.
Which is why I pick priorities for the month. It might be product improvement, or distribution, or fundraising. Whatever it is, everything I do that month has to move that one thing.
Then I break my monthly priorities into goals for the week and tasks for the day. So my calendar stops being a jumbled mess of everything and becomes a tidy block of tasks that move my priorities.
But you still have to fight the fires. Because something will break or someone will need an answer today. And not planning for this means that the fire will eat up something else on your calendar.
So I gave it a home.
Today, I have 45 mins allocated every day to firefighting. So if something urgent comes up, I tackle it then. If I have to tackle it right away, I can finish my task in the firefighting block.
This way, I am available when required but I also get things done.
And you should adjust the block to the size of your fires. When I was building Shezaar and handling a team of 7, I had 90 minutes every day for firefighting. And I batched the rest of the noise like responding to people, clearing my inbox, into it too.
2. Ask The People Around You
Founders have an almost unreasonable amount of goodwill for other founders.
Every time I have reached out to a founder with a problem of mine, they have almost always been willing to get on a call and think about it with me for at least 20 minutes.
So, ask for help! Ask your peers. Ask your mentors. Ask the people you admire. And if you have an audience somewhere, ask them too.
I do this a lot more now. When I am stuck on something today, I just post a note about that problem on Substack. And people give me thoughtful replies, offer introductions, offer actual executional help!
But if you don’t have anything that I mentioned, book some time on my calendar and I’d be happy to help! (don’t worry it is free)
Asking others also gets you out of your own head. Because building as a solo founder, even if you have a team, means every idea is validated by one person. You. And you are naturally biased towards the things you have created.
So, sometimes, the fastest way out of a problem is to borrow someone else’s brain, even for 20 minutes.
P.S. I am building something around this idea called Rent A Cofounder. The idea is that solo founders get matched with another solo founder dealing with the same, or a very similar problem and they spend a call brainstorming it together.
If you would be interested in beta testing it, DM me!
3. Network Before You Need It
Every door you can think of that needs opening has a person on the other side of it.
Hires, partners, mentors, investors, clients, press. Anything and everything. That is what network is for.
And it is very easy to disappear into your product, your startup and never build a network. You have work to do, and going to an event on a Thursday evening feels like the opposite of progress.
I have been there. But I got warm introductions to two brands for Shezaar just because I went to a female founders event and met someone who could open that door.
So give it some real time. You don’t have to attend events every single day or every single week. You could join niche communities. You could offer someone help. You could cold DM a founder because you liked what they wrote about.
The point is to find people and genuinely connect with them. And not the ones who could do something for you right now. But the ones you find interesting, the ones you admire, the ones you would want to have coffee with.
4. Don’t Be The Blocker
For the longest time, I spent almost no energy or time on getting better at the actual job.
Until you can hire someone, you have to do the job.
But working on yourself has no deadline attached to it. So it drops down the list of priorities constantly.
I am not naturally good at speaking well in public. But I spent 5 months pitching.
In a room full of people from the fashion industry, I could do well. But in front of people who had no context, I fell apart. Miserably. Because I could not translate what was in my head into words someone with no context could feel the weight of.
I could explain it. But I couldn’t make them care.
I got better eventually, through sheer volume of pitches. But 5 months of reps got me to a place that a few focused sessions would have taken maybe a month.
And this can quickly turn into its own kind of procrastination. So tie your learning to your priorities. If you want to pitch in 3 months, start learning how to be good at it maybe a month or 2 months from now. Don’t spend time learning something you won’t use for 6 months.
5. Do Something Unpredictable
I learned a very smart concept during my MBA: when you do things that aren’t expected of you, you widen your surface area for luck.
So change your routine now and then. Do something that doesn’t fit.
Join a reading group that meets in a park on Sundays. Take a pottery class. Go on a week long trip with likeminded people you barely know. Anything that is not your normal.
A few months ago there was a session for women founders in AI. They needed volunteers to help set up. Now normally I would just be the attendee. But this time, I volunteered instead. And I left with real connections to people I would have barely talked to otherwise. Because setting up chairs and snacks with someone is a much better introduction than a name tag.
I recently came across a solo founder, Kris Vazovsky, who is building something that I am starting to get a bit obsessed about.
Because Hidden Jam is basically built on the idea that sometimes the unpredictable week is the one worth taking.
Hidden Jam is a travel company that runs yacht trips, castle takeovers, ski weeks, and a list of other experiences for a curated group of founders and creatives.
Kris, is a pilot, sailor, and, by her own description, a professional collector of questionable life decisions. She made Forbes 30 under 30, sold her first company, and then built this one.
Her newsletter is a very entertaining look at what building a wildly unpredictable travel company actually looks like.
So, give her a follow and checkout Hidden Jam!
Now… none of these habits will make the journey of being a solo founder calm. I don’t think calm is on the table.
But these will help bring a lot more structure to the chaos.
And these will definitely ensure that chaos doesn’t quietly consume your entire month.
I am curious, what do you think about these habits? Do you have some that keep you productive and sane when you are building alone?
And if you know a solo founder who is having one of those days, weeks, months where they are incredibly busy. Send them this article.
The firefighting block is the part I'd steal. Most productivity advice pretends fires won't happen; you gave them a room and a door, which is the only version that survives contact with a Tuesday. One habit I'd add from my own months of zero progress: an audit at the end of every week, not the month. Four weeks is long enough to convince yourself the busy was the work. Seven days isn't. I write three lines on Friday: what moved, what I did instead, and what I'd cut. The "instead" column is usually the whole story. Curious how you size the 45 minutes. Is that the time fires actually take, or the time you're willing to give them?
The best way to thrive as a founder is to know your own boundaries while being prepared at the same time. I always find that being completely focused on what I have to do in front of me with zero distractions does make the job that much easier!