Could you help me understand myself?

2 points by danielsokil 4 years ago | 2 comments

Hi,

I'm Daniel, currently 22 years old, could you guide me towards understanding myself?

About mid last year an old friend called me up presenting an idea for a company. Together, we do an excellent job serving our customers. And then December comes around, And I have started procrastinating, no longer responding to my partner, not attending the office for the past months. The worst part is the projects I have promised to customers, have not been complete. At first, I attributed this behavior to burn out as we have been working for 12 plus hour shifts for six, seven days a week. But as I am learning, this seems to be because of passive-aggressive behavior. Before we started working on this company, my partner had already created an LLC, and from a previous startup experience, I did not want to get “burned” again. I've asked him multiple times to add me as a founder, and we should visit a lawyer to create a Certificate of Organization. However, this was always delayed, he told me he called the company that created the LLC to add me in, nothing has changed. I have a hard time expressing my concerns, and due to previous old trust issues not being addressed, I started to ignore him. So a few months go by, he seems to be doing okay on his own, meanwhile technical debt builds up.

Does this fall into the passive-aggressive behavior category? How could I fix this habit? And more importantly, let my partner know that I'm also trying to understand why I behave in certain ways, subconsciously. I still don't know why I put up a wall and ignore people, what am I trying to achieve doing that? My Mother tells me I got it from my Father, oh man.

aurizon 4 years ago |

Well, procrastination is common among many people. It is not common in successful people - they find a way to assess the priorities of the myriad tasks that life/startups present them with and perform them is the optimal order = they get on with things. Any IPO needs a founder and later a team that deals with this or = roadkill. If you have this aspect, from your genes or your own inadequacies, it must be rigorously culled. A lot of people make to do lists to give them a hierarchy of tasks that are in a priority basis, so if one task hits some glitch in performance of that task -that glitched thread task is dropped and another picked up so the overall goal draws nearer. This means you must not let these dropped tasks rest undone - that is part of what teamwork is all about - you ID these glitches and address them. Some glitched tasks are hard tasks that must be done at all costs for the goal to be reached - the IPO team must deal with them, just as you must deal with - say the hated scraping of the dishes before the food dries into a varnish or becomes an evolutionary path for various life forms! A team of two is a lean startup team - as it starts, it will grow as needed - who guides this? The founder alone or both of you? You are either a co-founder or you are not. Are you paid in $$ or paid in equity - that is a task that is prey to procrastination by design. After the $10 billion IPO you will be thanked profusely - unless the deal is nailed down in that COO, be content with that unless you stop this pernicious procrastination that plagues you. Your mother says you got it from your father - leave it with him, how did it ever help him? Not being an analyst, I can not say how you can deal with this and you obviously can not. In summation, list tasks in priority, do them in priority but multi-process tasks so stuff you do not like doing is not pushed down the list until you have a list of things you hate to do - all of which are neccessary = crash/burn. It is possible founder sees this aspect of you and does not want to get that COO done - he procrastinates on this task - does he see placing you on the COO as hateful or as a wise way to shed someone who does not get stuff done, but he also likes = conflicted? In any event this needs to be solved, you on the COO or you = exit. Sorry if I sound a little brutal here, but it can be a painful process to deal with this. I expect there are procrastination therapy groups out there - find one for founding groups/founders etc.. Nope, not tomorrow = today!!

brudgers 4 years ago |

At it's core, we are talking about a business.

You're not "getting paid" in terms of ownership/title/etc.

Quit and move on.

Try to work with people you trust.

Good luck.