I recently saw this quote from Steven Bartlett’s book ‘Happy Sexy Millionaire’ (which seems to be better than the title suggests):
‘Society loves to tell you how much work is too little work, and how much work is too much work. It simultaneously peddles the “you’re not working hard enough” narrative alongside the “you’re working too hard you’re going to burn out” narrative. Ignore both.’
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot this week. One day I’ll listen to a start-up podcast and come to the conclusion that I need to be working every evening and weekend, hustling. But then Instagram tells me that I need to take time to look after myself. I feel like both are true, so then I feel guilty that neither am I working every evening and weekend, but neither do I practise a lot of self-care!
I make a lot of excuses based around having two small children — I’m exhausted because I have kids. If I didn’t have kids I could work evenings and weekends. If I didn’t have kids my business would be growing quicker. Maybe these are true and maybe they’re not. But it’s not really helpful to compare myself to a young, single guy who can work throughout the night to get his start-up going. With only four mornings a week to work on Borro, I might need to lower my expectations a bit. I know my limits and my capabilities and I can only work to those.
Like everyone in the world, there’s a balancing act between work and home life. Sometimes it gets out of balance and you need to readjust. What’s the worse that will happen if I take a morning off to recharge? Will my business grind to a halt? No. There might be a few more emails to do tomorrow, but at least I’ll have more energy to do them.
