Don't Burn Out!

Has the new economy got you down? Are you feeling tired, tattered, tested, bested, toasted, and roasted? Are you looking for something to pick you up, slow you down, lift your spirits, drop your burden, make you smile, help your style? Well, you've come to the right place. Take the next few minutes to sip a cup of mint tea, to listen to your favorite recording of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik -- and to read the tips and tactics of these 15 Fast Company sages, your peers in the relentless race to the future. All of them are superbusy superbodies, and although they've suffered some bumps and bruises along the way, they've developed a few important tricks in the art of self-regeneration. They've vowed not to burn out, and they're learning how to keep the fires burning.

Vinod Khosla

General Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Menlo Park, California

It's great to know how to recharge your batteries. But it's even more important to make sure that you actually do it. I track how many times I get home in time to have dinner with my family; my assistant reports the exact number to me each month. I have four kids, ages 7 to 11. Spending time with them is what keeps me going. Work is just my hobby.

Your company measures its priorities. People also need to place metrics around their priorities. I spend about 50 hours a week at work, and I could easily work 100 hours. So I always make sure that, at the end of it all, I get home in time to eat with my kids. Then I help them with their homework and play games with them. When I'm with my family, I often turn off my cell-phone (I got rid of my pager a long time ago).

My goal is to be home for dinner at least 25 nights a month. Having a target number is key. I know people in my business who are lucky if they make it home 5 nights a month. I don't think that I'm any less productive than those people.

To make work more fun -- to make the intensity a positive experience, rather than a negative one -- you have to take time out to do what you enjoy. Keeping track of your behavior each month means that you don't slip up, because you know immediately whether your schedule is matching up with your priorities.

Vinod Khosla (vkhosla@kpcb.com) was a cofounder of Daisy Systems and a founding CEO of Sun Microsystems. He joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1986.

Susan Bishop

Founder and President
Bishop Partners
New York, New York

Entrepreneurs thrive on stress. And I'm someone who can tolerate a huge amount of it. When I finally start to burn out, I'm probably twice as far gone as most people are when they reach that point. When you burn out, you cross a line that separates positive, exciting stress from negative stress. And it hits you like a hammer.

That hammer falls hardest when I've put off doing something difficult. So my advice is this: Don't procrastinate. The best way to keep charged up is to do what's been nagging at you.

I once had a client whom I had to stop working with because my company was very busy. It was stressful even thinking about giving that client the news. So I put it off. It took me three months to work up the courage to do it. I kept trying to talk myself out of it, and, in the meantime, I continued to work with the client. Instead of just doing what I needed to do, I lived through three months of stress. It paralyzed me. It also affected my relationships with other clients, because it was a huge drain.

I finally decided that I just had to bite the bullet -- to make a plan and stick to it, as painful as that might be. I phoned the client and scheduled an appointment. I wrote it down on my calendar, so that it would be impossible to ignore. Then I just did it.

When you finally do that thing that you've been putting off, the freedom from the stress that it was causing you is its own reward. It feels so great to have done it. Good stuff immediately begins to flow into the space that the negative stuff had been occupying. You're no longer paralyzed. You get your energy back.

Susan Bishop (bishop@bishopnet.com) has started a cable-TV channel in Alaska, worked as a TV actress, and served as a partner for six years with the executive-search firm Johnson, Smith & Knisely. In 1988, she founded her own executive-search firm, Bishop Partners, which focuses on clients in the communications industries, including media, entertainment, cable TV, telecommunications, sports, multimedia, and information technology.