The Honest Founder

The Honest Founder

3-min energy audit for a better life.

Unlocking your zone of genius.

Xaver Lehmann's avatar
Xaver Lehmann
Nov 06, 2025
∙ Paid

Welcome to another episode of The Honest Founder.

Every week, I share two types of articles:

  • Free article (Every Tuesday): Stories from my entrepreneurial journey, delivered straight to your inbox.

  • Paid article (Every Thursday): Deeper insights, practical frameworks and personal toolkits to help you grow as an entrepreneur.


If you want to perform at your best, you need to know what actually gives you energy and what drains it.

I’ve learned this the hard way building two AI startups and burning out twice.

There’s a lot of brain science backing this up (Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky explains it brilliantly in Behave).

But you don’t need to read a book to start a simple audit will tell you what’s helping and what’s holding you back.

The goal: spend 75–80% of your time on things that energize you.

When you do, everything else becomes easier, faster, and better.

1. How to do it:

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