The Entrepreneur Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America’s startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today’s answer to the question, “How do you stay sane with little to no free time?” is written by Rajeev Behera, co-founder and CEO of Reflektive.
No amount of management experience can completely prepare you for being a startup founder. As Reflektive, a performance management startup that I co-founded in 2014, has grown from one to 100 employees, one to over 300 customers, and raised $42 million in two funding rounds, every day there is an opportunity to feel incredibly excited, but equally overwhelmed.
I know many entrepreneurs who fizzle under the pressure. That’s why it’s important to have a short list of core principles that you never deviate from on how to stay sane and thrive at a fast-growth startup, especially in the early stages of building a company.
Here are five ways I stay focused and healthy:
Hire the right people
As a founding CEO, one of the most important jobs you have is to build a strong foundational team that runs the business well each day. Being able to trust your team to hire the right people for every role enables you to step back and focus on the future and bigger picture.
The same goes for letting people go. You have to empower your managers to make those decisions so you can take care of high-value priorities in the business every day, such as reviewing and adjusting your business model and meeting with customers.
See also: 4 Easy Ways to Make Your Life A Lot Less Stressful
It’s up to you to hire managers you can count on, though, specifically those who are nurturing and care about employee development. Managers should work closely with employees to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and coach them to grow.
Prioritize every day
Each morning, I look at my task list and look at the biggest business risks and opportunities at the time and determine what two items to tackle that day. Right now, for example, we have a lot of HR executives looking to replace their annual performance reviews with continuous feedback, but we don’t have enough sales executives to respond to the demand.
This is one of my top priorities because it adds significant risk to our business model. I’ve been focusing on helping our recruiting team bring in top sales talent that is adept not only in selling technology, but in selling talent development solutions.
Make time for family
My wife is also a startup CEO, and we’re parents of a newborn. If we don’t make time to spend together each day, it would be easy to never cross paths. We both make it a priority to have dinner with each other every day we’re not traveling-no matter what.