Issue 175, Part Time CEO Newsletter

Hey, it's Dhiren 👋,

I had this conversation last week. A founder experiencing flat weeks, with work that he didn't feel was worth doing.

I told him what I do in those stretches. The gym.
Physical before intellectual. Let the body lead.

He replied that he didn't have the motivation to get to the gym.

It struck me that he was in a loop with no entry point. He was not waiting for motivation. He was waiting for something that can only exist after he stopped waiting.
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🧠 The trap most founders don't see

That loop is not unique to him. It is what almost every founder I work with is doing, at some point, with something. The task sits there. The clarity is there. The reason it matters is there. What's missing is the feeling that would make starting feel worth it.

And the longer you have been in business, the better you get at naming the waiting. Not being in the right headspace. Being selective with energy. Waiting for the right conditions. Needing more clarity before committing. The vocabulary gets more sophisticated. The avoidance stays exactly the same.

So they wait. Days become weeks. Weeks become months. The task sits untouched. Not because they forgot. Because they are still waiting for the signal that never comes.

The reason it never arrives is not personal. It is structural.

I've learned over the years that motivation is a lagging indicator. Like profit. Like revenue. It tells you what already happened. It confirms what was already built. Waiting for motivation before you act is like waiting for profit before you invest. The sequence doesn't run that way. It never has.
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🧠 The sequence that actually produces it

The sequence that produces motivation has a shape. It looks like this.

Motivation sits outside the system entirely. It is not the fuel. It is the exhaust. The thing produced by the engine running, not the thing that starts it.

The engine starts with Action. Imperfect, before-you're-ready, nobody's-watching action. For this founder, that action was the gym. Not because he felt like going. Because the gym is the smallest ring. The physical mind moving is what cracks open the intellectual mind. One follows the other. That is not motivation. That is biology.

Results are small at first. A session done. A clearer head at the desk. A task completed that had been sitting untouched for two weeks. Those results compound. Momentum builds. What you were waiting for at the start finally arrives.

By then you don't need it the way you thought you did. Because you're already moving.

The entry point is always the same. The smallest, most physical, most concrete version of the first action. Not the finished work. Not the polished version. The gym. The ten minutes. The one email sent.

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📢 Dhiren’s Updates

🌙 Eid is here in the UAE and the country is off for the next week. It is one of my favourite times of the year. The city slows down, families come together, and for a few days the pressure to be productive feels a little more distant than usual.

No issue next week. I'll be back the week after.
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