When people start businesses, they imagine that they’ll have more control over their lives, finances, and time. But once they get into it, they discover something different. None of those job perks are forthcoming. Instead, they feel more stressed and trapped than ever.
Many founders and business leaders talk about their stressful lives and how they cope with the pressures of their work. But for the most part, the workload isn’t the problem – it’s how they feel about their enterprise that is the real issue.
Entrepreneurs, however, will often confuse stress with hard work. They think that if they feel dreadful, they must also have high productivity. The truth, though, is that the two have barely any correlation whatsoever. In fact, stress can be a major hindrance for some people.
Here are some examples of how entrepreneurs mistake stress for hard work.
Believing That Exhaustion Is A Marker Of Value Generation
What is making you feel exhausted? Is it the fact that you met all your customers’ needs and created value? Or was it a problem with a colleague or the fact that your enterprise isn’t making any money?
More likely than not, it’s the latter. Providing clients with great service is an uplifting experience while dealing with constant staff issues can easily get you down.
As an entrepreneur, it is critical to differentiate between healthy, productive stress, and unhealthy, non-productive stress. Dealing with colleagues’ emotions is an example of the latter because it doesn’t directly create value for the firm. Instead, it’s a drag on your time.
Doing Everything Yourself
A lot of entrepreneurs believe that they are working hard (and in the right way) if they do everything themselves. Instead of delegating tasks to people inside the companies and external agencies, they bear the entire operational burden on their own shoulders.
Doing everything yourself, however, isn’t being productive. Remember, the role of the entrepreneur is to organize people and capital, not to do the work yourself.
Let’s say, for instance, that you’ve designed a leaflet to advertise your business. You could attempt to print and distribute it yourself, but that would only drain you of time and energy while you could be doing something more productive. A much better approach is to go to an agency like Action Mailing & Printing Solutions and just get them to do it for you. There’s an expense involved, but in business, there are always costs. The trick is to create more value than you use. That’s how you ultimately generate profits.
Believing You Have To Be Perfect
How many business leaders and entrepreneurs do you know who believe that they need to be perfect? It’s an epidemic.
While it is true that the market drives up standards, it will allow “acceptable” products, so long as they provide value. Fast-food burgers aren’t as good as their gourmet equivalents, but people still eat them.
Get out of the habit of believing that you need to be perfect. It creates an enormous amount of stress. Just focus on being “good enough” for your customers and staff.