Yes, to more rest.
No, to more lean startups, more working hours, more effort or new tools.
You don’t work on an assembly line nor dispensing bread in a bakery. Your main work tools are your creativity and your ability to find new solutions … so, do you think that being tired helps you in something?
Entrepreneurs are not “paid” (we don’t pay ourselves) for putting in many hours. This is not like in school, where you were rewarded for trying hard even if you didn’t get results. The effort is certainly part of the way, but our job is to strive in an environment filled with challenges and utmost uncertainty, by creating a product or service that solves a real problem, and to earn money in the process, ideally in ungodly amounts.
Yes, of course this requires a constant level of effort, much more than most people tolerate or accept but with some method to the madness. It is important to understand the emotional context of what it means to start a startup.
You already know creating a startup is not a sprint, it is a marathon. A marathon that will last between 8-10 years — if you are lucky.
And if you understand this, you will understand that if you dedicate yourself to sprinting in the first 10 kilometers, the safest bet is that you will not only end up broken but also unmotivated, and you will have left your health dragging behind you, as well as important hints and opportunities for your startup that you were not able to see because “you had a lot of work”.
As if all this were not enough, a certain façade has been established in what we call the entrepreneurial ecosystem (that friends of “entrepreneurs” pick up with great ease and acidity) where the important thing is not to work but for others to see that you work. Where the key is to “show” how hard we founders work, with stylish tweets such as:
“Nothing feels as good as coffee at 8 in the morning and working a Sunday while everyone else is at the beach” … and similar nonsense.
This is clearly a symptom that we are doing things wrong, either because we show that we are working when it is not like that, or worse still, because we are not getting enough rest; and you know the price to pay:
- Less Mental Clarity
- Lack of Motivation
- Inability to Focus
- Lack of Creativity
- Tendency for Pessimism
The job of a founder/entrepreneur is to get results, not to do “a lot of things” and to be everywhere. And by definition, that is the great scourge in many startups: there are always many more things to do than time available to do it … and it is not something that improves at all over time, rather the opposite.
You could spend 2 years working 24 hours a day without even sleeping and you would not “finish” the pile of tasks that are pending— a pile that does not stop growing day by day. That is why I have repeated ad nauseam that the best skill of an entrepreneur is focus.
You don’t have to do everything: the important thing is not how many things you say YES to … but to how many you say NO. Where do you focus your energy and effort.
Less “hang-outs”, less talks, less twitter and more focus on what is important. Simplify and stay with what is really key in your business; although it is very good for your ego and makes you feel good, the façade of entrepreneurship really does not lead to anything.
Fewer symbols, fewer ukuleles, fewer Steve Jobs quotes… and more work on what’s important.
As if that were not enough, entrepreneurs have to deal with a feeling (in addition to fatigue) that few recognize but many suffer: guilt. Guilt for resting while we have so many tasks to do, guilt for stopping along the way and taking a few days off when the rest of the team works hard. And on top of that, the other kind of guilt: not spending enough time with our family and those we love, not enjoying quality time with your friends. Guilt squared.
Do you know how this is cured? Well, understanding that it is really more important to take those vacation days than to continue working like a maniac, in an increasingly mechanical and less productive way. Understanding, as in a fitness routine, the days you train are as important as the days you rest, that your work tool is your brain and heart, and that both must periodically rest to perform better.
That rest, in addition to finding time for yourself and your hobbies and rediscovering your motivation to undertake new challenges, is perfect for reconnecting with the important people who really care about us, with those people who are always there and are our emotional safety net. . So the best advice I can give you is not that you measure your conversion funnel better, or that you question the business model or that you approach the market in another way.
Instead,
Take a two week vacation. Or one. But go. NOW.
WHAT’S YOUR TAKE?
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