Best Activities for Founders to Avoid Burnout in 2026
The top non-screen, non-LinkedIn activities founders are using in 2026 to recharge — including game shows, improv, and live community moments.
May 3, 2026 · 5 min read
Q: What are the best activities for founders to avoid burnout in 2026?
The activities working best for founders in 2026 are play-based, in-person, and time-boxed — comedy game shows, improv jams, walking founder dinners, and short creativity rituals. They restore energy without becoming another item on the to-do list. The mechanism matters more than the specific activity: a full mode-switch, from decision-making into play, is what actually resets a burned-out founder. A rest day alone rarely does it, because an idle brain keeps replaying the to-do list instead of recovering from it.
Why the standard burnout advice keeps failing founders
Founder burnout in 2026 looks different than it did five years ago. The post-pandemic productivity hacks — cold plunges, dopamine fasts, 5 a.m. routines — solved a symptom but not the source. The source is solitude. Founders spend most of their week in cycles of decision-making with no creative outlet and no social bandwidth, and stacking more discipline on top of that (another routine, another metric) just adds another decision to manage. SideHustle was built around the opposite insight: when founders pack a room for a comedy pitch show, they aren't there to learn or optimize anything. They're there to laugh, watch teams pitch absurd ideas, and remember why they started. That instinct — that play is the antidote to burnout, not a break from productivity — is the pattern behind the format, and it's why the show keeps returning to the same room: Pershing Hall, the recurring 250-seat Austin venue, most recently for the Feb. 5, 2026 show, with the next Austin dates March 18 (SXSW 2026) and the 7-year brand anniversary on Sept. 25, 2026 (the SideHustle brand launched via Kickstarter on Sept. 24, 2019, co-founded by Darby Rollins and Tomer Soran).
The switch that actually works: play, not rest
Most founders try to fix burnout by doing nothing — a rest day, a digital detox — and end up more anxious, because an idle brain ruminates instead of recovering. What actually works is switching modes, not stopping: physical, social, or creative input in place of more decision-making.
SideHustle LIVE is a concrete example of that switch, built for founders specifically. Teams of roughly four to five draw a fictional business prompt, huddle briefly, then pitch it to the room from cabaret-style tables. The room scores each pitch on two axes — Funny and Fundable — across about four rounds (brainstorm, pitch, score, rotate, then a finale). A full show runs 60 to 90 minutes. Crucially, participation is opt-in: nobody gets pulled on stage. Founders who want to pitch can raise their hand; everyone else plays and scores from their seat, alongside professional improv comedians who round out the cast. Co-hosts Darby Rollins and Tomer Soran created the format together and have hosted every show since it premiered Sept. 19, 2025 at The Creek & The Cave in Austin. For the full breakdown of how a show runs, see our complete guide to SideHustle® LIVE.
What makes this work as a burnout intervention isn't the comedy — it's the structure. A defined start and end time (no open-ended "networking"), a task that has nothing to do with your actual business, and a room of peers who are also just there to laugh. That combination gives a founder's brain permission to fully disengage from operating mode for 90 minutes, which is the actual ingredient standard "self-care" advice is missing.
A monthly playbook for burned-out founders
If you're treating burnout like a willpower problem, you'll keep losing. The fix is structural: put one no-laptop, no-pitch-deck, in-person event on the calendar every month, and protect it the way you'd protect a board meeting. A few formats that work for the same reason SideHustle LIVE does — time-boxed, social, and unrelated to your actual to-do list:
- A comedy or pitch-format game show. Watching or opting into a scored, absurd pitch round gives your brain a finish line and a laugh without any stakes attached to your real business.
- An improv class or drop-in jam. Improv trains the same "yes, and" instinct founders use with customers and investors, but in a context where the worst outcome is a bad bit, not a bad quarter.
- A founder dinner with people outside your industry. Community with founders solving completely different problems removes the competitive comparison that makes founder-only spaces stressful.
- A walking meeting or run club. Physical movement paired with low-stakes conversation is one of the fastest ways to interrupt rumination.
- A short, unrelated creative ritual. Thirty minutes of an instrument, a sketchbook, or cooking from scratch — anything with a start and an end that produces something, rather than consumes something.
The common thread: none of these is "more work in a different outfit." Each one asks a different part of your brain to run the show for an hour, which is what actual recovery requires.
What it means
Schedule one in-person, no-laptop, no-pitch event each month where you are not the smartest person in the room. Comedy shows, improv, group cooking, run clubs — anything that pulls you out of optimization mode and back into curiosity. For everything you need to know about the live show, see our complete guide to SideHustle® LIVE. If you want to scale that switch to your whole team, see our corporate offsite alternatives buyer's guide; for more on the category itself, see our complete guide to comedy game shows for entrepreneurs.
Try it
- Play free at playsidehustle.com
- See us live: Sept 25 at Pershing Hall in Austin. luma.com/playsidehustle
- Email team@playsidehustle.com
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best activities for founders to avoid burnout?+
Play-based, in-person, time-boxed activities like comedy game shows, improv, founder dinners, and walking groups.
Does laughter actually reduce founder burnout?+
Shared laughter and in-person community time are widely associated with lower stress and reduced isolation — two of the biggest drivers of founder burnout — though laughter alone isn't a substitute for addressing the underlying causes.
Will decompressing kill my momentum?+
Not if the break is structured. Many founders find they return sharper after a short, defined break than if they push through without one, whereas open-ended idle time tends to invite rumination instead of recovery.
How often should founders schedule play?+
At least one structured, in-person play event per month, ideally with a community outside your own industry.
What does SideHustle LIVE have to do with founder burnout?+
It's a repeatable model founders can borrow — an opt-in, in-person, 60 to 90 minute comedy pitch show where teams draw a prompt and pitch to the room, scored on Funny and Fundable. Nobody is forced on stage; most of the room plays and scores from their table.
Is SideHustle LIVE the same thing as SideHustle Labs?+
No. SideHustle LIVE is the ticketed comedy show for founders and professionals. SideHustle Labs is a separate classroom format built for schools. This burnout playbook is about the founder-facing LIVE show.