How I Turned Anxiety into Productivity
By: Pedram Ataee
Tags: Life Lessons, Writing, Professional Development, Business, Self Improvement

We are in the final days of 2020, a year full of uncertainty and madness. The pandemic created lots of confusion for me, as well as for everyone else. I was in the early days of building my own business when the pandemic hit the world. I had left my previous job for something more exciting at the end of 2019. It was time for me to focus on building a new business if the pandemic would have let me.

I am an engineer by education but an entrepreneur by heart. I took a doctorate from the University of British Columbia in engineering and worked for several companies in the past years. I worked for a fast-growing tech startup, a venture capital firm, a failed startup, and so on. I oversaw many failures and successes. These experiences help me find out the reasons behind failure and paths to success. I always wanted to share those experiences with the community.

Back to Reality

It was February 2020 when the pandemic officially hit the world. I was full of anxiety and couldn’t be very productive. I had to fight with it somehow. It was awesome if I could channel my anxiety into something productive. Being productive when you are anxious, doesn’t always work. “Sometimes the feelings are too intense, and it’s impossible to redirect them.” well said Caitlin Jill Anders.

It was not time for me to code and build a high-tech product. I decided to write articles on Medium. It was the best coping mechanism for me. Writing overrides all the bad news, thoughts, and feelings that make me anxious. I figured it out by chance but stayed on it afterward.

The First Step

I started writing part of my experience working at a venture capital, where I worked with technopreneurs to enhance their product and growth strategy. I developed an analysis framework named VALID that helps entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts validate their business ideas during that experience. I wrote an article titled Your Startup Must Shine Or Will Perish published in the Startup publication on Medium to explain that framework. This was the beginning of an exciting path for me. The first step.

That article hits 500 views on Medium in several days, which was a good achievement for me at first. I achieved a 20K+ record in the later articles, but I never forgot how happy I became at that time.

I was super confident about the content. The business analysis framework was well-tested in the past years with many use-cases, and I had received much good feedback. I still doubted myself, though. On a beautiful day, I received the message below. An internet person officially started using the framework in his business. I was not there to explain things myself; everything happened over a Medium article. A milestone was achieved!

I also posted the Medium article on LinkedIn, the best social media for sharing serious stuff. Many positive feedbacks were received from an Emmy award winner to a top-notch CEO in tech. It was not finished there. A medical surgeon also read the article and shared his positive feedback with me. It was time for me to put away all the self-doubts.

Post-Martyrdom

All the feedback received from the community showed me that my business analysis framework created value for others and helped them mitigate risks in their businesses. Yes, I believe in creating value for others!

After receiving all the great feedback, I thought it would be a good thought to write an extended form of that article and explain more things that were on my mind. At that time, I was certain that my business analysis framework has had helped people. So, I decided to write a book. A greater goal comes with greater challenges, which were fun. Why? I am always open to new challenges!

I started writing a book, a coherent piece of work with an important message to deliver and great illustrations and examples. It doesn’t need to mention that a great book comes with a great design. I didn’t know anything about writing a book, so it took me several months to finish it. It was a fabulous healing process for me to cope with the challenges we all encounter. I hope you also find it useful.

Takeaways

I don’t want to list a series of lessons that I learned on this journey. However, I was dying to share my journey with you. This is the story of a person who holds great knowledge but fears to share it with others. The story of a person who deals with anxiety caused by the pandemic and how he channeled it into something productive. After all, it was the story of a person who dreams big and still sees himself at the beginning of the path. Kudos 😊