Life shouldn’t be a grind, and your work shouldn’t either…
The further the nations we live in get into debt (and push us into hyperinflation), the tighter the economic conditions become from the average person. The more our belts tighten, the harder we work; just trying to do whatever is necessary to be successful in an unfair world.
Most of us don’t even complain, we just roll up our sleeves and get on with it. Maybe we even turn it into a little game, trying to outdo ourselves every day…
It’s this well-intentioned resolve that leads us to “grind-culture” and the worship of “hard work”. Our ambition and our instincts tell us that this resolve is what earns us our place at the table, but this is an illusion.
Hard work, by itself, is no guarantee of success. And laziness is no guarantee of failure.
Yes, if you don’t already have money, it’s safe to say you’re going to have to work to get some but that work doesn’t need to be difficult or unpleasant.
It often is, but that’s because we tend to take what’s being handed out instead of creating our own opportunities. When you take a job with a company, you have to abide by their rules, follow their schedule, and work according to their standards.
Any freedoms you have in a job can be granted or taken away at will and the time that you spend working for them isn’t really your own. Since they profit off of your time and energy, they want to keep you as productive as possible but there’s not much incentive to care about you as a person, or your specific goals and interests, especially as the size of the company increases.
So you can grind all you want but as long as you’re working for someone else, the majority of your effort is improving someone else’s bottom line.
When you work for yourself, of course, your interests are always aligned with those of your company because you benefit directly when your work generates results.
But working harder doesn’t necessarily equate to earning more income, and it definitely doesn’t guarantee you more satisfaction or a better quality of life.
In fact, it’s all too easy to work yourself to death when you work for yourself.
The opportunity to earn on your own terms makes you feel like the sky’s the limit but actually the limit is your health and your sanity. And more importantly, grinding away without a specific goal in mind (and I don’t mean a financial one) is just a road to dissatisfaction and self-defeat.
Real success has to take the shape of something very meaningful to you personally -something that your success allows you to achieve, or to spend your time doing. Real success provides lasting satisfaction in addition to material comforts and this requires striking a balance between your needs as a human being and your ambition in business.
Success has to be sustainable
If you work yourself to the brink of self-destruction just to get to a comfortable level financially, you’ll always need to maintain at least that level of activity just to keep your life together. That’s not sustainable in the long-term…
You can’t commit 100% to something because life is about more than that one thing. Sure, you need to eliminate as many distractions as possible to be successful. But if you can’t look away from your business, is that really success?
To create a life worth living you need to be willing to work hard some of the time and to carve out time for having a quality life. And to do both, in their own time, with your full attention and focus.
Set yourself a fixed number of hours per day for working on whatever drives your revenue, another block of time for administration, marketing, accounting, and continuing education, and a final block for the rest of your life: your family, hobbies, and so on.
These are the three pillars of the entrepreneurial life: making money, running the business, and having the life it enables. If you can’t devote 1/3 of your time to each then something is out of whack in your business model and needs to be addressed.
You have to keep learning. You have to keep marketing yourself and running the day-to-day aspects of a business. These aren’t revenue drivers directly but they’re essential to your long-term success.
Likewise, you have to live a life that makes all that work worthwhile, or you’ll grow tired of it and do something else, eventually.
Plan and price your time and your projects so that 30ish% of your time pays for 100% of your life and make sure you’re devoting enough time to all the other aspects of your business -and your happiness- to create a sustainable kind of success.
Work has to be meaningful AND pay well
We can’t be too picky when we’re trying to find work, can we? Well…actually, in my experience, we should be fairly picky who we associate with and upon whose cart we hitch our ride to success.
But the reality is, if we dislike our work or the people we work for, it’s impossible to avoid sabotaging our own success in some way, consciously or otherwise. On the other hand, if the work we’re doing is fulfilling, we’re likely to contribute far more than our compensation requires.
This is why I choose to work with small businesses and solopreneurs. Larger companies have more money to spend on marketing but I prefer the company of other entrepreneurs and rooting for the underdog.
Helping small business owners succeed with their marketing enables them to continue providing jobs, putting food on the table, and chasing their dreams. That makes me feel like my work has meaning and that I’m contributing something positive to the world.
Even when the work is hard and the opportunities are scarce, this responsibility speaks to my soul and keeps me motivated; not just to make money, but to make a difference as well.
But you’ve got to keep both sides of the equation balanced: your work needs to be meaningful but it also needs to net you enough to live the way you want and allow you to pursue bigger and bigger goals.
Don’t build a better mousetrap (for yourself), build a future
Remember why you wanted to go into business for yourself in the first place: to take control and create space for the life you dream of living.
Don’t sacrifice so much in the pursuit of this idea that you lose sight of your end goal.
We glorify “grinding” far too much. The basic idea of being willing to do whatever it takes is the right energy, of course, but we take it too far.
There is a point in every activity where your returns from doing the same thing eventually diminish and you’re effectively wasting energy that could be spent better somewhere else.
Your side hustle, or main hustle, shouldn’t be any more draining than the equivalent job you could get just working some company -or it doesn’t make any sense to work for yourself.
But it’s simpler to say that than to manage your business effectively enough to avoid this pitfall. It is very easy to find yourself in this situation. And if you do, don’t worry and don’t give up!
Your business is a monster of your own creation. You can always reassess your goals and your methods, recalibrate your business model, or restart in a new direction. That’s the beauty of being financially independent…you’re in charge.
Engineer your way to success by working backwards from the life that you want to live. Take your time visualizing the little details of your eventual success so that you can recognize them on the horizon and keep your internal compass oriented in the right direction.
Then all your hard work is both effective, because you’re steadily making progress towards your goals, and it brings you closer to joy; because joy, rather than “success” is where your true north lies.
Want more tips on building sustainable financial independence? Learn how to harness the power of the marketing and mindfulness to create the life you want at NathanBinford.com.
