This last week in New York was all about the new storm named Florence which was supposed to do a lot of damage to the coastal areas. Many people are worried (understandably) and just want it to pass as soon as possible.
There is another group out there, those who live and breath water. They keep their surfboards ready at all times and can’t wait to jump into 7ft waves produced by the hurricane.
I’m definitely not as I hardcore as some of the guys (and girls) out there, but I did jump in the rough stormy waters this morning and caught a pretty decent ride.
Yep, some days are just like that, you get one ride (if even that) after hours of paddling and fighting with incoming waves but that one ride is what you will remember for years to come.
Here is the moral of the story – everything is relative. Something that is good for someone else might be bad for you and vice versa. I feel like a lot of times we forget this simple fact (well, I guess I’m talking mostly about myself) passionately trying to convince other people that our way is the only right way.
Another important thing I wanted to mention while in the context is timing. It has to be right.
Say I just got out of the water and called you saying surfing conditions were amazing this morning. Clean, no wind, sunny and not as many surfers on the lineup. You are all excited and can’t wait to finish work to catch a few amazing rides. It’s about 5.30pm when you come to the beach, all pumped up with your surfboard all waxed up and ready for action. When you actually see the water you quickly realize it won’t be much fun after all.
It’s windy, the tide is low making the waves rise and crash very quickly (a lot of times on your head and back) and on top of that it starts to rain…
But you told me conditions were amazing?!
Sure they were! At 7am in the morning.
The same thing happens in the business world – we can get some decent advices but not all of them are applicable to our current situation. “Don’t become the bottleneck of your business, hire and delegate” – great advice in itself, but if you follow it too soon in your business journey it may destroy your venture altogether.
Ok, not sure why I brought that up… To tell you the truth I was thinking to write about some other things today, but hey, life flows its own way and I’ll have to follow. Stick with me 🙂
I changed the topic because of the story one of my friends posted on Instagram. Well, he is not really a close friend of mine, but someone I’ve met at the event about a year ago.
Anyway, I’ve been following this guy for quite some time now and recently he started posting some stuff about his new office and work life.
Every time I would open his story on Instagram, it would be him “hustling” till 2am. The worst part in my mind was that he seemed to genuinely enjoy and embrace the struggle, making it sound as if “hustling” is the only way to survive in the business world!
This whole concept of “hustling” became very popular these days among young entrepreneurs (millennials), largely because of Gary Vee dominance in the digital media space, and to tell you the truth it freaks me out a bit.
Sure, I understand that sometimes we have to put extra efforts to get things going, but it’s not something permanent.
If you are “hustling” every day for an extended period of time, it tells me one of few things:
- your schedule is messed up
- you have no time blocks to make important things happen
- you don’t know what’s important and what’s not and just hitting all of the items on your todo list
- your work environment is bad (constant distraction and context switches)
- you live in the constant reactive mode
- you have no life outside of work (something that you will most likely never have should you continue this way)
- you are on the right path to burnout
The other day I was reading Stephen King’s book “On Writing” and there was an interesting observation that he made that I feel like would be appropriate here.
When some of his books made it big, Stephen felt like it was time to re-furnish his home office. He bought a very expensive massive writing table, just like the one we see in old fancy castles, and put it in the middle of the room. The table and the whole room looked gorgeous and expensive, but there was one thing that made Stephen a bit uneasy.
He noticed that the whole process of writing became “too official” like it started to became more important than the life outside of this fancy cabinet…
Few months after the renovation he sold his fancy table and instead bought a small and simple one that would easily fit in the corner. All of the space that was cleared up was used for the occasional pizza parties with the kids and other random family gatherings.
In the past, I myself fell into the trap of working too much and let me tell you it wasn’t pretty. It took me years to recover from that mentality and realize that it’s the life that is happening here and now matters the most.
Far too often I hear people say: “Once I REALLY make it, I will compensate for all of the time taken away from life (friends and family)”.
There are a few problems with this approach:
- What if you never make it? At least not to the point that you’ve expected. Happens a lot.
- Even if you make it big, just like you always saw it in your dreams, you may be surprised to realize that some things like relationships can’t be fixed with money…
Now let me ask me a question – do you prefer “live to work” or “work to live” approach?
What if I ask you to work four hours a day instead of eight, will you know what you do with your time? Will you still be successful? Are you sure about that?
Take a minute and think about it.
It’s all about perceptions in our heads. If you believe that success requires sacrifices and 12 hours work days, then that’s what you will get.
There are other approaches out there. Just saying… )
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