You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve told politicians that you’ll vote for them if they campaign for a 36-hour day.
I really have, but I don’t think he took me seriously.
As an entrepreneur it just seems as though there’s not enough time in the day. I remember when I was a kid in school looking at the clock and thinking “How slow can that minute hand move? Will 3 p.m. never come?” Sometimes the minute hand would move backwards, I swear. But when I started running a business I would get to work, look up a few minutes later and it would be 11 a.m. Then I’d look up again a few minutes later and it would be 4 p.m. And what seemed like three minutes later would be 10 p.m.
There is always more to do than you have time for, and if you had unlimited time you could fill it and still have things left over on your to-do list.
It was not understanding how to control this dynamic that got me into trouble during the first several years of running a business. I didn’t realize you could say “no”, go home, and that things would be ok the next day. Every day for me was “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to get this done! Ahhhh!” and so I found myself at the office at all hours of the night, sleeping on the floor, you stop watching TV, and 6 p.m. feels like 1 p.m until one day you think “Ah ha! All we need is a day with more hours in it!” And when you’re at church and they mention how Joshua was fighting the Amorites and the sun stopped for a day you get excited and think “Yes! Yes! How do I do that?”
What I’d really like is a stopwatch like the one from that Twilight Zone episode A Kind of Stopwatch in which the guy has a stopwatch that stops time. Man, if only I had something like that, I could just stop time every time I had too much to do, work for a few extra hours, maybe even a few extra days, until I got caught up, and then start it and get back to real life.
But alas, the only real solution is to prioritize, get organized, and grow enough of a backbone that you can say “no” to time-robbers that aren’t important, like TV, movies, and a life.
“I’ll keep it short and sweet — Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.” — C. Montgomery Burns
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