“Expressing creativity like no one is watching,” my partner said. “That’s something I read today that really struck me.”

I paused. Interesting statement.

When we talk about creativity in a traditional sense - painting, dancing, making music - the process doesn’t require an audience; we become our audience, attuned to the tiniest improvements, quietly proud of mastering a movement or refining a brushstroke.

But what about in business?

Running a company, at any stage, demands relentless creativity.

I thought back to our early days - the constant pivots, designing solutions to new problems, shipping half-tested ideas, failing, tweaking, repeating. A loop of making without certainty. Of creating without applause.

A week later, on a long drive, I brought up that line again, recalling those days when it felt like we were dangling off the edge of a creativity cliff.

“No one was watching, anyway,” I said.

There’s freedom in that - total creative license. But it can also feel like shouting into the void. How many iterations can a team go through, without feedback, without traction, before that creativity begins to erode?

It’s a common pitfall for founders: isolation in the early stages. No product yet. No users. No real feedback. Just blind faith and brute persistence.

“You should write about it,” he said.

So here I am.

Thanks, husband, for this week’s newsletter idea.

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^{_{Why Creative Isolation Hits Founders Hard}}

Creative isolation is part of the journey in the early days of building something new. Founders often work on an idea for weeks or months with little to no external validation, applause, or feedback loop. Just internal faith and grit.

In business, unlike in traditional art, our creativity is not just self-expressive - it must be useful. It must serve, solve, and scale. The problem is: utility isn’t always immediately visible. Startups can go weeks, months, even years in product iteration limbo before the market offers any meaningful reaction. This kind of innovation sits between creativity and utility, and that in-between space can distort how we perceive our own progress.

It raises a deeper emotional truth that founders don’t talk about enough - that being creative in the dark can feel both freeing and deeply destabilizing.

Why Founders Should Learn About Temporal Discounting

A lesser-discussed concept in this context is temporal discounting - our tendency to value immediate rewards more than future ones. When you’re deep in building, the reward (traction, user joy, revenue) is abstract and distant. This delay dampens motivation.

Temporal discounting refers to the psychological tendency to devalue rewards that lie in the future compared to those that are immediate. In plain terms: a smaller reward today often feels more motivating than a much larger reward six months from now.

This idea comes from behavioral economics and is supported by work from McClure et al. (2004), who found that two different brain systems are involved when we evaluate immediate versus delayed outcomes. The limbic system (associated with emotion and impulse) lights up for immediate rewards, while the prefrontal cortex (responsible for reasoning and planning) handles delayed ones.

What this means for founders:

Building a startup is basically one long delayed gratification exercise. You’re pouring time, money, and energy into something that might only pay off - financially, emotionally, socially - months or years from now. That goes against your brain’s natural wiring.

In the absence of any short-term validation, your motivation wanes. Doubt grows. Burnout creeps in. Why? Because without immediate wins, your emotional brain doesn’t get the “hit” it needs to keep going.

How This Shows Up in Founder Behavior

• Chasing low-leverage dopamine: Instead of focusing on long-term traction, founders might over-invest time in things that give a quick sense of progress, like over-designing a landing page or obsessing over pitch decks, rather than validating product-market fit. (ps. I am guilty of this.)

• Dropping ideas too early: When the future payoff feels too abstract or far off, you may prematurely pivot or quit. Not because the idea is bad, but because your brain can’t feel the eventual reward.

• Working in secret for too long: You avoid sharing your work because you’re not “ready,” but in reality, early exposure might be exactly the feedback loop your brain needs to stay motivated.

Counteracting Temporal Discounting as a Founder

You can’t rewire your brain, but you can design around it. Here’s how:

1. Build Immediate Feedback Loops - try to build in public

In the absence of feedback, our brains don’t stay neutral - they drift toward critique. Our evolutionary wiring is built to detect threats, not celebrate subtleties - we fall into the Negativity Bias. So when no one validates your idea, your mind will often supply the worst-case scenario instead.

Create tiny, regular wins that remind you progress is happening. Examples:

• Post public build-in-progress updates. Following the build in public founders in all type of industries has really been one of the most helpful things in my personal journey.

• Share a weekly insight or behind-the-scenes decision on Twitter/LinkedIn.

• Set up biweekly founder accountability calls just to reflect on what moved forward.

These aren’t vanity - they give your brain real-time dopamine while you wait for the larger reward.

2. Visualize the Future Self You’re Building For

This study shows that when we vividly imagine the future, we value it more. Temporal discounting weakens when we emotionally connect with our future selves, and we are more likely to make choices aligned with long-term rewards.

Try:

• Writing letters from your “6-months-ahead” self reflecting back with gratitude.

• Building a vision board with not just outcomes (e.g., revenue targets) but experiences (e.g., “ team building celebration when we achieve 1000 true fans” or “first customer love email we received”).

3. Layer in Short-Term Milestones

Break down your big goal into “emotional KPIs”:

• First stranger reply

• First no from a customer (rejections are great feedback!)

• First week you felt in flow again

Reframe success as consistency, not outcomes. You’re training your brain to feel good about showing up.

Founders who don’t understand temporal discounting often think they lack motivation or discipline, when in reality, their brain is doing exactly what it’s wired to do.

But founders who design around it gain sustainable creativity.

You’re no longer at the mercy of your emotional chemistry. You’re building scaffolding for your long-term ambition - and protecting your creative spirit while you wait for the world to notice.

Forward this to your founder friends who need to read this today.

Bonus read: The globalization of temporal discounting