We’ve all heard the wisdom from those flight attendants, reminding us in the pre-flight safety instructions to affix our own masks before attempting to help someone else. As entrepreneurs we are serving others, and we aren’t going to serve them well, without adopting an attitude to care for ourselves first over always going, going, going.
Catch Those Z’s
Let’s address sleep first.
Sleep is necessary. It is healthy, and it’s rejuvenating. Sleep spurs creativity, and it improves performance.
What could you possibly bring of value for your business by denying your body its natural recharging activity constantly?
Will there be times that you’re up earlier than normal? Absolutely.
Will there be times when you burn the midnight oil working on something? For sure.
That’s totally normal and frequent for entrepreneurs, especially in the early days of our businesses, but that can’t be something that happens all the time. It just won’t work.
Early in your entrepreneurial journey, you should spend plenty of time on the why, how, and what you plan to do. Warren Buffett is quoted as saying “An idiot with a plan will defeat a genius without one.” So, plan. I know that when you’re still in that 9-5, your time outside the office to work on your dream is limited. You have early mornings, late nights, and weekends to build your dream. You will probably forgo an evening here or there binging on Netflix, while you work on the website or social media plan for your new venture after putting in a full day at the office.
It happens, and it’s okay. It just can’t be all the time.
Recharge Yourself
Take a moment and consider what happens when you put your cell phone through its paces without putting it on the charger. It eventually runs out of battery life, right?
Sure, you can do a partial charge while you’re at your desk for a bit or when you’re in the car or you carry around an external battery pack, but that phone battery usually doesn’t fully charge. A good night’s sleep is like the time your phone spends on the wall charger. You may be able to stave off a complete shutdown with a quick nap or an extra cup of coffee. Eventually, all those partial efforts will catch up and hit you hard, and if they are frequent, you hope it’s not at a time when it will really impact your business.
On Hustleburg, there’s been plenty of discussion about how knowing your why, your reason for doing what you do. That will help energize you, constantly igniting your passion, but that can’t be the only fuel in your tank. You need to care for yourself before you can serve others.
Address Your Well-Being
Obviously, there’s more to overall well-being than simply sleep and energy, and your investment in your well-being should be atop your entrepreneur portfolio. Whether it’s a matter of keeping yourself healthy by eating well and exercising to prevent health issues down the road, ensuring mental sharpness by doing the right things with regard to mindfulness, therapy, or addressing any struggles or issues there, or working to fill your spirit with a rich and full outlook. As Dr. Jenna Elwart noted in Episode 23 of Hustleburg, there are benefits to holistically approaching all the interdependent aspects of what makes up each of us.
When it comes to our physical health, we should be ensuring that we stay physically active through exercise and activities, as well as eating in a way that enriches our bodies. Additionally, a fair amount of time away from work to relax and to be at our most productive when we engage with the work we do.
One thing that can really help stay at peak productivity and separate aspects of life is meditation. Not only does a practice of being mindful help to be more present in the day-to-day, as well as a relaxation time, it helps to have a better accounting of how the body feels. The time spent in such a practice also provides a defined break between “work” and “fun,” building meditation in to serve as the bridge between the two. Without that bridge, both work and fun melt and swirl into each other, and when that happens, we end up not particularly good at either.