Everyone’s Day Is 24 Hours. How Do You Spend Yours?
Entrepreneurship…is greedy.
Your business will take all your time if you let it.
You’ll never run out of problems to solve or opportunities to chase. The biggest constraint for every business owner isn’t skills or experience or even mindset.
It’s time.
And not only because there are just 24 hours in a day.
Because there are other ways you want to spend those hours. Other people you want to spend those hours with.
So your time is limited to work on the business.
But your time is limited for those other things and people, too.
***
If I didn’t have a family, I might get more done. Probably work 18 hours a day. Learn more. Grow faster.
But I’d be a lonely, empty man.
I probably have the ambition and motivation to work 90 hours/week. (I did not receive the gift of being naturally well-balanced.)
Having a family and friends, caring about my health, and wanting to live my life….doesn’t mean I have fewer ideas about my business.
It means I have to make smarter choices. About what I will do and won’t do each day. About how I want to spend my precious time.
I wish I realized all this at 40. But at 50, I got lucky. I recognized that my time was finite.
That I had to figure out how to balance things in a way that made sense for me. Because however I choose to spend my hours, the only guarantee is that I don’t get them back.
***
In one way, I spend my time building for the future. At 50, I started to think more than I ever have about what I would achieve in the next 10 years. Anything major takes that much of an investment.
I’m thinking about the future, and what it will take to get there.
On the other hand, time with people I love is all about being present. In the moment, here and now. Now about what might happen tomorrow, but what I can share with them today.
I’ll be honest: those two priorities, my business and my loved ones, compete with one another. They also feed one another.
To even attempt to do both requires ruthless decision-making and discipline.
Ask yourself:
- What are the 2-3 most important things to you?
- What are you willing to do to get those things?
- What boundaries are you willing to put up to protect them?
This holiday weekend, I hope you find time, take time, and make time for the people who matter to you most. You deserve it, and so do they.
The business will still be there Monday, waiting for you to get back to work.
