Hit the “Pause” button? Yes please.
If you are in someway linked to the oft misunderstood world of Entrepreneurship, chances are that you already know the “No time for shit!” club. Chances are that you are already a veteran member of the club with stories of how you work 100 hour weeks with no time to breathe. Look at that smug smile on your damn face! Let me tell you one thing: this same mad race to “Get Shit Done!” that you are proud of — is pulling you back.
In this constant race of getting ahead of our competitors, we eventually get into the “doing” mode — focusing on churning out as much stuff as we can, pulling in long hours that sometimes end at daybreak, waking up at 4 AM to shoot that “brilliant idea” to the team, feeling a sense of grandeur in being known as one who never has a free moment, the god of productivity. Ironically, this is also one of the things that stop us from reaching our full potential.
Let’s see how…
Do the pieces fit?
What a tangled mess of jigsaw pieces, this!
It is highly likely that a lot of work you do looks a little bit (or a lot) like this:
- Too many things done partially with no connect to others?
- Many, many loose threads waiting to be picked up?
- A to-do list that never seems to shrink?
How about hitting the pause button right now to spend a few hours just trying to put the pieces in order? And yeah, don’t start a new task while on it — that’s just cheating!
Spending sometime every week just taking stock of what you “have been doing” will add significant perspective to what you “should be doing”.
You will find many tasks that just need a few minutes to close for good. You will discover communication items that have been sitting in your inbox for weeks, the senders seething in resentment on not hearing back. You will find that you now have answers to questions that vexed you before (sub-conscious thinking is a cool thing that actually works). You will find open debates that now make no sense.
Yes, you will end the day feeling good and energized.
“That’s the answer! Err… what was the question again?”
Short term memory loss is not something we generally associate with business guys, right?
Wrong! In the daily drive to do more and more, we frequently end up forgetting what really matters in the long run. One major culprit behind this is FOMO (newspeak: Fear Of Missing Out). More often than not, FOMO will just lead you to the abyss of unproven fads. And chasing such fads costs time.
Taking out time periodically to zoom out and reassess the “Why” of what we are doing stuff is as essential as doing stuff.
Check out the industry landscape, find out where your priorities lie and be ruthless about discontinuing anything that absolutely doesn’t fit in. If you take pride in working 100 hours a week, you sure can’t afford to spend time on tangential items, right?
The world has moved in the last few weeks… have you?
In the last couple of weeks, while you were working your ass off, this happened:
- More than 24 thousand patents were filed… just in the United States.
- 10,000+ products were launched
- 8500+ product failed — some quickly, others slowly
Yes, that’s how fast things are moving. And that’s why it is easy to miss the next big opportunity. A few quick questions:
- Do you spare time to find out what’s new in your domain?
- Which are the companies that have come up and what are they working on?
- Which are the companies that failed and why? What didn’t work for them?
- What opportunity will you capture before your competitor does so?
- Is there something new that will help a David like you kill that Goliath that is always so intimidating?
If the answer to most of these is no or “no clue!”, you are moving too fast for your own good (or, you are just damn lazy!).
Spare some time every week to check out the state of your industry. The speed at which you spot and capitalize on strong trends is what will keep you alive and kickin’.
If you cannot do this, God help you!
“Martha, schedule a dinner meeting with my family please!”
Let’s get this straight — all other relationships are ephemeral, only family will be with you for ever. In your mad drive to squeeze that extra meeting, your family suffers and you don’t know it until it is too late.
As it is, most of us deal with a bucketload of stress each day and home is where we recharge. Give your family the respect and importance it deserves. It is not a virtue to have not seen your kid for a week — it is sheer stupidity.
Disconnect and spend quality time with your family. They deserve it. You deserve it.
Go on a vacation — the world will not collapse in the 3 days you are not at office. Take your significant other out on a date — make them feel loved (they bear the brunt of your falsely directed emotional outrage frequently enough). Take your parents out for a walk in the park — know what they do to fill their time.
Let’s be honest. You can build another business but a broken family seldom gets together.
So…
It is important to devote insane energy and passion in what you do. And you are doing that brilliantly. Kudos!
But it is equally important to hit the “Pause” button in life, make sense of what you are doing, reassess why you are doing it and keep a lookout on the future. And while doing that… don’t skimp out on some quality family time, ya!
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Like this? How about hitting that little heart? :)
