You’re busy.
You have to generate more leads, close more deals, hire people to help you, scale your marketing strategies, and find more advertising dollars.
It often feels like there’s not enough time in the day.
As it is, you’re probably working between 10 and 15 hours per day (and who knows when you last enjoyed a weekend!).
But it’s not your fault. You’ve been taught that if you want to be an entrepreneur and build a successful business, you have to wake up earlier, work longer, and go home than everyone else.
Entrepreneurs Are Taught To Work Ridiculous Hours
What if I told you that you’ve been conditioned to believe that more work equals more success?
Well, remember when your teacher told you that the way to get better grades was to study for longer? Or remember when the manager at your first low-level job promised a $1 hourly raise if you took on more work?
For the most part, our entire culture uses a really simple formula for the value of a person’s work…
Time = Money
In the entrepreneurship space, that translates to working ridiculous hours (more than anyone else).
To illustrate, I found this post from Grant Cardone in 2017: “Most people work 9-5. I work 95 hours [per week]. If you ever want to be a millionaire, you need to stop doing the 9-to-5 and start doing 95.”
Oh boy.
First off, I know lots of millionaires who are definitely not working 95 hours per week.
Second, and more importantly, not all work is equal. You can work 95 hours per week and be about as productive as a snail or you can work 4 hours per week (*cough* Tim Ferris *cough*) and be wildly efficient.
Let me explain.
Not All Work Is Equal
Why do some people get paid $50 per hour and other people get paid $500 per hour for the exact same service?
You could argue that the person who gets paid $500 per hour doesn’t take as long to complete the project because of their expertise, whereas the $50-per-hour worker will take longer, evening out the cost and making the decision between the two employees unimportant.
But experience shows us that isn’t true. Typically, the $50 per hour worker and the $500 per hour worker spend the same amount of time working on the project.
And yet, one worker gets paid 10 times what the other person gets paid.
Why?
Because the $500-per-hour worker’s quality is 10 times better than the $50-per-hour worker’s, even though they both dedicate the same amount of time to the project.
In other words, those workers aren’t really getting paid for their time — even though the pay is hourly. They’re getting paid for the quality of their work.
Which means…
(drum roll please)
…not all work is equal.
The trick, then, is to spend less time working on things that have little to no impact on business growth and more time working on real lever-moving tasks.
But the problem is, when you’re constantly working, you don’t have time to discern between which tasks are time-wasters and which are game-changers.
That’s why you need to spend 30 minutes per day doing nothing at all.
Do-Nothing Time Is Critical For Innovative Thinking
Remember the last time that you were bored out of your mind?
Maybe you were on a long plane flight or car ride, maybe electricity went out in the house, or maybe you were sitting at the bar waiting for a meeting that would never happen.
Seems like a waste of time, huh?
As entrepreneurs, we typically try to fill that time with something “productive” — listening to podcasts or reading a book.
But what if instead, you just sat there? What would happen?
Well, your mind starts churning. You think about your business and things that need fixed. You think about employees that you’re struggling to train and how to solve that. You think about new and innovative ways to grow your business — and typically, the longer you think, the more ideas you come up with.
And I’m not talking about spending time mindlessly playing games on your phone or scrolling through social media or reading the newspaper, I’m talking about intentionally spending 30 uninterrupted minutes every day with nothing but a pen and paper to jot down your thoughts.
Allow yourself time to process recent events, to get away from the bustle of business, to innovate and problem-solve, and your business will never be the same again.
30 Daily Minutes Of Stillness Can Scale Your Business In a Way That Hard Work Never Will
Give it a try.
Schedule 30 minutes tomorrow between meetings to do nothing but think. Bring a journal along with you and write down any thoughts that feel important, or that you want to follow up with at another time.
The fact is, your brain is still 30 times more powerful than any super computer. It’s your best tool for problem-solving and growth-hacking. But when you’re constantly busy — when your brain doesn’t get any down time — you don’t reap the benefits of that massive computing power.
You need some time to breathe, sit, and do nothing.
That’s when you’ll come up with your best ideas and your most innovative solutions.
Let me know how it goes!