Inside every entrepreneur exists a raging internal battle between trying to usher their business towards success while also still having some semblance of an existence outside of work. Ironically, most people go into business with a goal of obtaining financial freedom for their families, yet a significant portion winds up becoming a slave to the tasks involved in keeping that business afloat.
It’s a classic corporate conundrum – you work hard to obtain wealth for the purpose of having an enjoyable life, but in the process, you wind up sacrificing much of the life that you originally sought to enhance at the start of your career. If you’ve been feeling like there’s not enough time in the day to enjoy your life and put in the work needed to create the future you’ve planned for yourself, here are a few tips that might help you make the necessary work-life balance adjustments:
Work Smarter, Not Harder
The old saying “work smarter, not harder” does literally apply to every form of work because there’s almost always at least one way to improve a workflow process. Hammering away in an inefficient or deleterious manner is not only bad for your health it’s also stifling your creativity and hindering your overall productivity. Sometimes, you need to change the how not the what. For example, a product designer would be creating a lot of extra work for themselves by hand-drawing schematics when they could just use a free schematic diagram software.
Have Reverence for Your Schedule
Try to treat your schedule like it’s a matter of life or death because, in an indirect way, it sort of is. Think about it this way: if you’ve created a schedule that, when strictly adhered to, will provide you with the lifestyle that you desire, then failing to adhere to that schedule would result in the eventual death of that dream or lifestyle that you’ve envisioned. The most common mistake made by entrepreneurs is not treating their business like “a real job.”
Re-think Your Current Routine
Maybe what you need isn’t a stricter approach to your current schedule but a new, more holistic approach to scheduling altogether. The idea that you could be pouring your sweat and tears into a job or endeavor that’s never going to get you anywhere is a tough and terrifying reality to confront, but sometimes that’s what it takes to put yourself in a less burdensome and more lucrative position.
If You Want to “Be Your Own Boss,” Behave Like It
If you held yourself to the same standard that a corporate boss would, you’d get much more done during your work hours. Maximizing productivity and consistency will help you preserve energy and you’ll be able to create a more predictable social life around your designated work hours. Every business has to answer to someone, whether it be the client, customer, partner, or investor. So, in a sense, everyone has a boss. Likewise, everyone is already “their own boss,” so the idea that entrepreneurs have some special privilege to work slowly and leisurely is exactly that, an illusion.
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