[FD3SA]

Seems like you've been going at 110% for a long time. My recommendation: take a break. A month at least, and just explore passions that you never had the time for during your adventures. Build something fun (I like go-karts and mini bikes), read about something totally new and unrelated to programming (history, evolutionary psychology, fiction), and challenge yourself physically (strength training and endurance).

It's easy to get caught in the echo chamber of the Startup world. The reality is, it is very hard to strike it rich in any industry. That doesn't mean we should stop trying, but just try to enjoy your life along the way by diversifying your time investment portfolio. That means that even if every attempt you make fails, you still enjoy the journey.

So go out there and have some fun. Don't worry, there will be plenty of opportunities for startups when you return.

[jborden13]

This is beautiful advice - take it. I am experiencing a situation semi-analogous to the OP's. I've killed myself and my health over the last 7 years to get a startup "going". While our traction is decent, scale and growth aren't easy. And since we are a difficult to scale business, we find ourselves not easily raising good, inexpensive money. So we've been bootstrapping it for a long time and my health and my relationship with my family have taken a hit. I thought having strong revenues would alleviate alot of the pressure, but as they say, "more money - more problems". Meaning, more clients = more needs, more support, etc. And we have an anemic team to do this. I had become very moody, grumpy, unwilling to listen - a bit of a nightmare. It wasn't coming from a bad place, but I just wanted to get shit done and didn't have time for any extraneous chatter or "unimportant" details.

After fighting intermittantly with my cofounder and my wife, I decided I didn't want to be that way. I've burnt the candle on both ends long enough and I was out of wax. While I can't take the full month off like FD3SA is recommending, I significantly scaled back (for me) to only working 5.5 days a week and putting a big effort into working out at least 4 days a week. Also, spending quality time with my family, not just being in the same room while I stared at a laptop. Keeping a high priority on work, but also a similar priority on fun and on life in general. I've only been doing this for a couple of months and have seen a significant improvement on my productivity, a more harmonious working and family life, and just a better overall outlook on life.

There are a million great opportunities out there, especially in the tech space - but if you are burnt to a crisp and you are physically/mentally not in a good place, it's easy to not see them or to feel too defeated to want to tackle them. Take care of yourself - you'll appreciate it.

[malux85]

This is great advice, and OP, if you think this would be a waste of time, it is not.

Our brains get stimulated on new patterns. By doing something totally non-computer related higher level concepts will stimulate the higher regions of your brain and give you new perspectives and insights. These perspectives and insights will both work as a source of energy and motivation while you're coding, and the higher level patterns you learn doing a totally different task will help you "think outside the box" when writing software.

Go out there and stimulate that higher neocortex with some fresh patterns!