It’s a good idea to aim to progress in other dimensions of life throughout the duration building a company.

I have a belief that while working on a company, in my case Buffer, you should be progressing in other dimensions of your life. Generally, any sort of progress is not linear. Meaning that sometimes you’re going through a flat patch, sometimes you’re seeing significant growth and progress, and other times you’re even declining or going backwards.

The types of dimensions this could be applied to are those such as friendships, family / relationships, exercise and fitness level, investment and financial freedom, hobbies or skills, experiences, mindfulness and self work, etc. These are a lot of things to work on alongside building a company.

Personally, no matter what the outcome of Buffer, and no matter the phase it is in, I want to have several other dimensions of my life in which I’m progressing. If I approach things in this way, then whichever moment in time I pick, whether 1 year in, 5 years in or 15 years in, I will have progressed in life in terms of my overall goals and dreams.

Alongside trying to make Buffer successful, I also work to become more fit through strength training, I'm trying to become a better Dad, a better partner to my wife, and I want to progress in hobbies; which right now include playing piano, writing and growing my network, and tinkering with code, automation and AI. I’m also trying to build a new cardio habit and doing it by trying out cycling with an indoor bike trainer. I've been building Buffer for almost 14 years now, and I've had a wide variety of hobbies, goals, and self-improvements I've focused on over time.

This approach is in contrast to the "deferred life plan", where you go all-in on your startup and sacrifice everything else, with the hope that one day it will all work out. I see people do this a lot, but it could be potentially devastating if the startup doesn't work out. And regardless of the outcome, startups come with so many lows amongst the highs that it's really worthwhile to have something else that's going well in life on those tough days, weeks or months.