Aviral Jain is the co-founder and design lead of Ripen. 

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Aviral handles design and content at Ripen along with managing operations occasionally 🫂

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What do you do in the mornings? 

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I'm trying to better it, but I usually wake up at 8:30.

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I'm trying to reduce this by 30 minutes every month so that it's not very hard on me. I've been trying to improve it.

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I usually wake up at 8:30, I take just an hour to play some music and I kind of get done with the chores for the day. So that basically includes, you know, cleaning my room first, doing some skincare, and then taking a bath and having breakfast. 

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I need like my workspace very clean, you know, otherwise, it interferes with the rest of my day. So that is the first thing that I do in the morning. 

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What do you do in the evenings? 

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I try to go on the run in the evening. That kind of keeps me and my fitness in check as well.

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It also helps me differentiate that the workday has ended and now it's time for my personal time.

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So now that kind of helps me differentiate and you know, I take it from there.

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How do you manage your workload? 

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I think the company's energy really depends on the founder's energy. If you get burnt out, then that's going to affect the company directly.

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I mean the best way that I do my work is in sprints. So I mean you just don't go full-blown and you know do like a full-on working session. What I basically do is take very short breaks in between so that I don't feel burnt out throughout the day. 

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How do you identify areas to improve?

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At Ripen we do have a culture that promotes self-improvement.

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We do have weekly introspection calls in which we take feedback from others and basically try to identify that these are the areas that we need to improve upon.

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Plus I do have a personal list for myself and that includes long-term goals and monthly short-term goals. So if one thing took me an hour to do by this month and next month, I should be able to do it in a shorter duration of time.  This helps me improve and master my skills as well. 

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What do you do for your mental health? 

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I kind of do a lot of things. I do have a therapist. I've been going to therapy for around three years. It’s like a monthly check-in kind of thing that kind of keeps me in comfort. But apart from that, I do have my calendar time allotted to my family because I'm kind of close to them and my girlfriend as well. 

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There is this distinctive time that I have to devote to them and that helps me process things and is like a safe space for the people I can fall back on.

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And one more thing that I think a lot of people can also implement in workplaces is they can try to maintain a relationship with their team that kind of when you go into a meeting doesn't feel like a meeting, it's more like a therapy session. So I handle design. 

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So the design team we've kind of like built in such a way that you know we're friends first and colleagues seconds. So I mean that kind of helps.

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Any advice for other entrepreneurs prioritizing mental health? 

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What I personally do is I do have a checklist of sorts which basically helps me to find. So this could be a great activity. What you can basically do is make a checklist and you can probably list all of the things outside work that kind of give you joy or help you take the edge off and basically when the work shift ends you can probably kind of prioritize on those and just focus on those areas. Thank you.

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