It's frustrating when you go through periods where you don't sleep. Other than the obvious (I look like shit), it doesn't help for a productive day. In fact, a lack of sleep makes you less efficient, effective and logical. Your mind becomes scattered and that's when it sets in - you are no longer the best version of yourself. Worse still, you know it.
You power through regardless, and that list just doesn't seem to get any smaller. We're entrepreneurs, so our to-do list is based on how many hours we have in a day.
Employees often wonder what keeps their bosses up at night, and there definitely are recurring reasons. Namely, these three:
- We're excited about opportunities and potential. We can't stop thinking about the fact that our businesses could be so much more than it is today. It drives us crazy and ensures that we spend hours jotting down notes and surfing the internet. Many entrepreneurs believe that when you are lying awake at night you should write down those ideas, or just get up and keep working. The problem with the latter is that you are depriving your body of much-needed sleep.
- We have not gone through our to-do list as things popped up, and we are remembering all the things we haven't done. Yet again, we could get up and drive to the office or sit at the kitchen table, but that's not good for us and we know that well. Instead, we stay up all night quietly frustrated that we had missed doing something that needed to be done.
- Our employees. It's true, we are not only worried about what we haven't done, we have remembered the fact that we probably asked you to do something and you didn't confirm whether you had done it or not. It was important and needed to be done, but perhaps you didn't realize, or you forgot.
Being an entrepreneur is no walk in the park. It's one constant rollercoaster that I'm not sure I would have chosen had I known. I would have been afraid and realized other things are more important. However, now I am safely almost 20 years down the track, I know that my life was as it was meant to be. The highs have been incredible, the lows soul destroying, but overall I wouldn't have the luxury I have today to overlook Sydney Harbour knowing that I don't have to worry about paying a mortgage, or whether I could afford to go on holidays. I just have to worry about my baby (my marketing business), and if I work it out soon, I will learn that my baby flourishes more when my employees take the reigns and show the world just how god damn talented they truly are.
