Focus
Preface: Focus
“They” say my child is easy. Perhaps they are right, and I am just whining right now but I love sleep.
I love sleep more than coffee, bbq and house of cards, combined. I never understood the true depth to my love for sleep until I had a child.
Ambitious folks we are, founder daddies and founder mommies, blindly ambitious perhaps. We seek to create and juggle two intersecting lives, the business and the family, in perfect harmony. If you are in it you will find no such harmony. If you are in it you know its damn tough and you need focus.
Laser like focus.
Without focus and determination you stack the cards against yourself in ways you can only understand when you supremely focused. I’m talking about one of those adderall fueled pre-mid term crunch sessions from college.
That is focus.
For those of you that struggle in this area listen up because what I am telling you is effective. If you are questioning getting started on your start-up you need to do some soul searching and some research on the woes of starting your own company. Main point: it aint easy folks…you gotta want it…really really bad. In my opinion, you have to start with YOU first, then the rest falls into place.
A couple things that helped me.
Sleep time for your baby= work time for you:
You have probably heard people talk about how important a schedule is to a baby. A schedule is double important to a parent for your sanity and ten times more important if you are starting a business.
Begin thinking about your next move/task before they go to sleep.
Work at night while they are asleep and forget about sleeping when they sleep during the day.Naps are a luxury you can’t afford, unless it is the day after the Super Bowl. Then take it, of course, every man has his limits.If you are lucky you may get 4 hours of real work done during the daytime, and then less as they get older.
Awake time for your baby= time to revisit the to-do list
If you aren’t a task oriented person it is time to adopt this mentality and live it. To manage all the little things you need to do it is crucial to start multiple to do lists.Don’t be like those waitresses that don’t write anything down and then screw up your burger order.
That is absurd.
Write it ALL down. Brushing your teeth and you thought of something you forgot, write it down. Laying in bed and realize that you forgot to pay a bill…write it down. This goes for personal and business, you may have been able to keep it together before a child but a lack of sleep, lack of free time and compounding stress will equate to you missing important businesspersonalchild milestones. Grocery list, house maintenance, business, personal, you get the idea. *I use the reminders app thru mac, any device I have with me I can update or add things quickly.
Equally important is removing stuff off the list. Why? It keeps you motivated. Sometimes if it is quiting time I will go through my list and review the tasks of the day and have a beer, preferably ice cold.
What is the point of all of this BS? To capitalize on every minute you can. Harness your time adequately and you can find a harmonious ying yang like balance.
Kind of.