It’s getting to be that time of year (at least for those of us torturing ourselves in climates with winter). We finally have options.

On Friday, a friend texted at 4pm asking if I wanted to grab the family and meet him and his family at a brewery. It was 70 degrees and it was a no brainer - we were at the Nod Hill by 4:15. It was also the first time anyone had invited me anywhere during what I’d call “working hours” since, maybe, October.

The spring and summer will demand more of your time than winter and that’s a good thing. But, we’ve still got to figure out how to prioritize your startup. One of the most successful founders to ever come through Tacklebox has an ethos that’ll work. He willingly shares it with anyone who asks how to start a startup while you’ve got another job:

“Make it fun. If it isn’t fun, you won’t do it. You have enough not-fun things in your life that you have to do. If your startup is a not fun thing in your life you don’t have to do, you’ll never do it.”

It’s incredible yet theoretically obvious advice - if you enjoy working on your startup, you’ll do it more. But, few people take making their startup “fun” seriously.

I’ve thought about it a lot and have some ideas and things that have worked. Here are three:

1. De-atomize it. I’ve written about the de-atomized life and how much happier people who live that way are. The cliff notes is that we all, at some point, decided that stripping away anything that is “non-essential” leads to better outcomes. So, instead of going on a 2-hour bike ride with friends, you do a 20-minute peloton class at 5am. You lose all the benefits of interacting with people and being outside and plotting a course, and you gain Alex Touissant screaming at you and a leaderboard. Atomized things are usually easier to measure, but that doesn’t always mean they’re better.

So, de-atomize your startup work to make it fun. Get a group of people you’ll work on ideas with, create a Slack channel where you post updates, join a biking club for people working on startups - whatever you can do to latch something you enjoy onto the work of starting a business. You’re all Tacklebox members, so, you’ve got members sitting here who you could work with more closely.

Sitting in your basement alone writing cold emails while everyone sleeps isn’t fun or sustainable. Meeting with a group Sundays at a coffee shop to talk startups then work for an hour is. Is it the most efficient way to get 25 emails sent? No. But will the interaction make sure you’re thinking about your startup more, and will other people help those 25 emails get 10x better? Almost certainly.

2. Make something you enjoy part of your business. I love writing. I do it for fun. When my wife takes the little guy and Rubes for a walk on a Saturday I get excited and break out my freewrite and just get something out. So, a few years back, I decided I wanted that to be a part of my startup.

What do you love doing? How can you smush that together with your startup?

Love to run? Building a SaaS tool? How can you combine those two?

3. Embrace Reprogramming AKA prioritize and recognize type-2 fun. We’re buffalo, remember? We run towards the storm. Every time you’re dreading work - cold emails, cold calls, whatever - acknowledge that feeling and reprogram yourself to get excited by it. Discomfort nearly always equals growth. And discomfort is your differentiator - 99% of people run from discomfort. If you lean into it, your work will be differentiated. Reprogram in the moment, reflect to have type-2 fun.

Fun things are more likely to get done than not fun things. So, make your startup fun.