Sustainable Intensity: A Founder's Guide to Wellness Without Burnout

Sustainable intensity in action - consistent training beats performance spikes

Sauna + Cold dips and Gym are a great combination for many to ease stress and be healthy. Specially for Founders and Thought Leaders.

Gym raises dopamine, sauna forces you to focus in the moment, and it raises blood flow in the brain, the cold dip raises dopamine even more. The feeling is perfect. 😊

But the above is just the tip of the iceberg. As a Founder or a Thought Enabler of a Company (my case), be intentional about your healthy routines.

The Hidden Trap of "Healthy" Habits

My angle is, if as a Thought Leader you find yourself: over-offloading on sports, over-offloading on gym, remember just because these habits are "healthy", overdoing them is not healthy.

Let's say, going from 0km to 50km a week running, because you were super stressed and the running dopamine helped you feel good, is not healthy.

If instead you were drinking all week at a pub, you would immediately realize this, but because Sports is ranked as "healthy" it's easy to go unnoticed.

Also, because Thought Leaders are often super competitive, sports have lots of Ego traps. So back to my point, Sports are healthy, routines are healthy, so if you wanna be a balanced Thought Leader, be intentional about it.

Performance vs. Spikes

Balanced doesn't mean going easy — you can go really hard, but at a sustainable pace. The trap is going so fast that you burn out and crash to zero for a week or two. That's not performance, that's a spike followed by a hole.

Sustainable intensity always wins.

Think of it this way: Being a Thought Leader is an Ultra Race = consistency beats performance spikes.

My Framework for Sustainable Wellness

Here's what actually works for maintaining peak performance without burning out:

Morning Foundation:

• Wake up early, exercise — that helps control how much stress affects you through the day
• Drop coffee around 12:00-13:00
• Have water and electrolytes all day

Evening Recovery:

• Do the sauna and gym before dinner, 30min is enough
• Sleep 8h a day (non-negotiable)
• Repeat

The Non-Negotiables

Family and Presence

Make sure to make time for your family and friends and enjoy their presence, being present, turn off the phone. Be intentional about it.

Mental Stillness

Cultivate mental stillness, every other week, call it off "healthy" and turn all comms off and work on something you have been wanting to work on for months. When we get bed sick we take the day off and nobody dies, why not do it when we feel great every now and then? Right?! Do it.

That sense of control will help you manage your external stress factors.

Building Your Own Framework

Build your own framework and apply it ruthlessly like your life depends on it. Because it does.

And if this framework and adapting it to your reality feels overwhelming on top of an already overwhelming business — understand that this should become second nature. And like anything worth mastering, it requires repetition.

Start messy, keep showing up, and it clicks.

The Real Performance Metric

The real metric isn't how hard you can push for a week or a month. It's how consistently you can show up at 80% capacity for years.

That's the difference between:

• Founders who burn out and disappear
• Leaders who build lasting impact

The choice is simple: sustainable intensity or unsustainable spikes.

Choose wisely. Your future self (and your company) will thank you.

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Track your own sustainable intensity journey. Connect with me on Strava to see how consistency beats intensity spikes in endurance sports — the same principles apply to building companies.