Most people identify entrepreneurship, with 12 hour workdays and high levels of stress. Apparently, there’s another way. If you ignore difficult tasks, and focus on the ones that you can work on with confidence you will constantly feel like the right person at the right time. The founders of Heroku made millions of dollars operating this way. Some of the tips in this post could help you, follow their footsteps…
Do you work more than 4 hours a day? The founders of the cloud based platform, Heroku didn’t and they made a 200 million dollar exit. They must know something about the smart habits of work…
I heard this story many times from Steli Efti at conferences and blogs. You can just listen to it in Episode 56 of TheStartUpChat.com.
The Heroku guys told Steli, that “If something is too hard, we don’t do it.” ”.
This doesn’t make sense. As an entrepreneur, you crave challenge, and feel competent to deal with the hardest tasks. Then why on earth would true entrepreneurs, who made 8-digit exit before, say something like this?
Here is why.
If something feels too hard or can’t be fixed easily, it’s a good idea to ignore it for a while. Just keep focusing on what you are good at! If you are a GTD fan, put these projects into the Someday box. If you are not familiar with this method, just set up a reminder, which will alarm you 6 months later.By that time, two possible scenarios will arise. Either 1) you will have the knowledge or the team to execute. Or… 2) The problem will not be important anymore.
Look at difficult things as red flags. They seem hard, because either you are not the right person for the job, or it is not the right time for you to work on it. In these scenarios, be honest with yourself and say, I don’t have a suitable approach or tactic right now.
Sometimes it’s the best to just push aside the unresolved situations. Admit that it seems to hard – yet. Later down the road when you encounter with it again, it might be either easier.
It’s possible, that next time you will have a better team, more experience or a deeper knowledge about the topic. It’s also imaginable, that you will realize, that it wasn’t the right challenge and you should never have bothered with it in the first place.
This approach is mind blowing. This philosophy simplifies life on so many levels!
You are more inspired and productive, if your projects are doable, and you feel competent at your job. Basically, you will feel that you are the right person at the right time, and you will be able to get so many awesome things done.
Does it seem like that everything you thought about life – like word hard and stuff – was just wrong and it turned upside down?
Well, there are many ways to do things, and I’m sure that the Heroku guys didn’t intend to say that this is the only aproach that could work. That being said, it is good to see an example like this. No matter if you are in a rock bottom position or rising high, let’s do the homework and just think about it. I’d love to hear your take on it! Comment on my Facebook page or just send an email to peter@szanto.co!
My recommendation is to cut the clutter out of your life and focus on what you love.
thanks for the great infl
your welcome!