Atychiphobia – The Founder’s Foe
Here’s how one of the prominent fears that is known to pummel founders to the ground could be identified & tackled.
What do you remember about Steve Jobs?
A super successful entrepreneur who also turned a multi-millionaire by following his dream, passion towards building innovative products that the world really cared about & adopted to seamlessly.
Truth is, the number of times Steve & his teams have hit failure over their products & turned out blunt in terms of user adoption would easily outweigh the occasions they hit success.
Entrepreneurship is difficult as one ought to have courage to learn & master the art of taking things with a grain of salt & moving on. This is certainly not as rosy as young folks who take to it & decide to get on their social media handles on Day-1 / Week-1 to share a slice of how uber-enthusiastic their lives have turned out post switching to their new business owner role.
The one factor that could excite most people is “freedom of choice” & how unbound one could feel in terms of the situations / decisions they will have to take. But what they don’t realize is, it’s one small move that could bring down the entire ship causing debacles leaving one rueing over it all & how wished they had an UNDO switch somewhere so as to roll-back to the previous state they were in.
[Sanskrit:]
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥ २-४७
[English:]
Karmanye Vadhikaraste, Ma Phaleshu Kada Chana |
Ma KarmaPhalaHeturBhurma Tey Sangostva Akarmani || 1-47
[Meaning:]
The Lord says, “just believe in doing the work, perform it devoutly but don’t get yourself attached to the results, in fact you’d rather do very well if you leave that unto me entirely.”
The root of most problems in the world happens to be “expectation”.
But then, as a founder one ought to have an expectation to keep themselves going, sans which there could be no fuel empowering those engines. Entrepreneurs do wade through a lot over their journeys right from the time they start off to the time they reach a stage of EXIT. The journey is often fraught with a lot of uncertainty, tons of ambiguity, expectations of oneself as also the others around (not to mention the users / clients), fears, scares & the like. More often than not, there could be a lot of anxiety whereever there is expectation.
Here’s a visual by Paul Graham bringing out the hardships of the journey in a rather humorous manner. [⚠️You may not find it funny if you’re an entrepreneur.]
The majority of the problem here is the period of time between the two tops (the initial rise & the final rise) in the graph, which may as well run into years if one doesn’t seem to get their act together & focus on the right things at the right time as they should be. But having said all of that, it could easily spell one’s doom if a founder / product manager who is actively involved with strategy / playing a role over strategizing seems to be holding a fear of failure (Atychiphobia) whilst working across each of those critical junctures.
Yes, entrepreneurship is difficult, no doubt. But Atychiphobia as a condition could ruin a founder’s chances, derailing their thinking & affecting their psyche even before they start out, detering them from taking their first step forward.
Definition:
Atychiphobia [atiki-foe-uh-phobia"] is an intense fear of failure. It comes from the Greek word “atyches,” meaning "unfortunate.” People with this condition may tend to consciously put an effort to avoid situations where they sense a potential for failure.
Some reasons why Atychiphobia could turn out to be really bad for founders & anyone else who is dabbling with strategy is:
It could detach & make one averse to calculative risk-taking
It could render them myopic & derail visionary thinking entirely
It could create gaps owing to mind-blocks hampering natural logical thought progression
It could degrade one’s problem-solving abilities
It could affect positive & active decision-making leading to many a missed opportunity
It could spoil the culture of a team & eventually lead to dilution
NOTE: Social / societal / peer pressure could be one of the major contributors where the thought that they would be a total disappointment to others could loom large psychologically denting the person & shattering their confidence.
Identification & Resolution:
Here are a few signs to help you identify whether you are a victim of Atychiphobia (/ going to be one) & combat it successfully:
1. Mental Blocks
Failures could be an integral part and parcel of the product / entrepreneurial journey. When nobody goes into work thinking they would fail, nobody wants to be faced up by nasty surprises.
You may be carrying the trait of Atychiphobia is you happen to fail at something & you have trouble imagining what went wrong. The critical thinking switch may go off in you even for a brief period & you fail to see how you may have avoided being in a nasty situation. When you seem to have a feeling that something is wrong somewhere, you know you ought to have approached the situation a little differently but you still don’t know how to break the shell of uncertainty & go on to succeed. OTOH, when perfectionism could also lead to mental blocks that lot may already have a few alternate routes earmarked towards combating the situation.
Ways to combat it:
Implement the Pomodoro technique during your hours of work
Talk to someone who you think may have a solution / bail you out of your situation
Hire a mentor (TPW - Facebook) & ensure you discuss issues in depth with them
2. Distractions
The average attention of humans is measured at 8.25 seconds & that happens to be lesser than a Goldfish which seems to hold on for 9 seconds. But having said that, the average human also knows how to get back on board quickly.
You may be close to becoming Atychiphobic if you seem to distracted by some mundane / unimportant / insignificant task(s) when you ought to be concentrating wholly one something else crucial. At time that is also known to largely hinder your preparation building up into a major / minor event like say, an important business meeting / presentation. Those last-minute headaches, body-aches, irregular bowel movements could all be characteristic symptoms of the condition.
Ways to combat it:
Lock yourself in seclusion (if need be & possible given the WFH set-up)
Set targets across various cadences (day-end, mid-day, beginning-of-day, hourly etc.) & see you drive yourself towards completing them in order
Turn off notifications of all Apps that don’t connect to deep work
3. Procrastination
Everyone is expected to know their priorities / plan their time / days / schedule better, more so if one is a product manager & 3x if one happens to be an entrepreneur, which is why procrastination ought to happen within reason.
It is possible that you are Atychiphobic if you happen to be procrastinating more than you should be. And you could be in the grip of the condition if you happen to selectively prioritize the low-fidelity tasks & procrastinate the higher ones. What’s next, you are totally behind schedule & seem to have no time whatsoever to concentrate on, pick up & finish a particular task that’s important to you.
Ways to deal with it:
Always tie everything you do to a purpose
Insist on obtaining clarity on the goal before proceeding
Ask clarifying questions to get to the bottom of the impact if something of exigence comes up
Be flexible, but ensure you have a priority set & in order
4. External Perception
We humans are proven to be social creatures, meaning we look up to, desire & yearn the acceptance, praise & validation of the others around us, at least the ones who we consider important in our lives. But that could end up being chaotic if one is a product manager & detrimental if one is an entrepreneur.
Atychiphobia could have got the better of you if you find yourself deeply worried about the perception of the others who may not even be connected to your cause / purpose. It could be really worse if you feel like you need external validation for everything / every minor choice you want to make. This could be a grave psychological condition & you should look to get help immediately sans wasting any ounce of time.
Ways to combat it:
Understand & implement the Pareto principle into your life
Ensure you make it a habit to celebrate small wins
Find an interesting hobby, preferably one that could help you totally switch off from work
Be grounded, learn to treat wins / losses at face value & see them as learning opportunities gifted unto you
5. Under-confident
Most of us believe in underplay as it totally aligns with the concept of “under-promise & over-deliver”. But deliberately putting in an effort towards sounding under-confident could be totally different in comparison to being low on confidence.
Your condition may be Atychiphobic if you try and put an effort towards building a story to justify your underperformance even before you step on to the stage & try something new. Lowering the other’s expectations so as to build an alibi for your poor performance is a typical trait here. When some worry too deeply about what other people may think / how the external world would react to their failure, some may feel totally consumed by constant pressure reflecting as a terrible dent in their confidence.
Ways to combat it:
Get to the bottom of the rationale behind the under-confidence
Network with a keen eye towards learning from the experienced ones, surround yourself with people who really care for you / your cause
Methodically work towards improving physical & mental health
Invest & talk to a mentor who can take you through a few practical workshops if required