What is up everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew.

Welcome back to Founders Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you the business builder,

the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business,

a team, or a new product. You know, I may give off the vibe that I'm a really confident founder.

And when it comes to certain things that play into my strengths, I am confident.

Public speaking, relationship building, creative thinking, and identifying talent.

But there are also things that as a builder, I have been perpetually

unconfident about. And one of those things is the way in which I work. I'm going to tell you

about my tenuous relationship with how I do work. I'm sure many of you can relate to it,

or at least can relate to this feeling of self-consciousness that we all experience in different

aspects of our careers and work. So let's hop into it.

For literally the last ten years, I have convinced myself that I am a bad worker.

And the more that I have told myself that story, the more that I have believed it,

and gotten anxious about it. Here's what actually goes through my head every single day.

I have convinced myself that I am only successful because I have logged more hours working

than most people. But if I work the same number of hours as most people, I wouldn't be successful.

I have convinced myself that I do best when my calendars wide open, when I have the ability

to dictate my schedule, and I have more than enough buffer for all of the time that I inevitably

procrastinate. I've also convinced myself that's why I was not a good student in high school,

but I was a good student in college. In high school, between classes and sports,

I was tied up between 8.30am and 6.30pm, which meant I had to do my work between the hours of 7

and 10pm, or it simply wouldn't get done. I didn't have a choice of when I could work.

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