Give Up on Personal Conflict (For Productivity)
High-performing entrepreneurs, founders, freelancers, and mentors have one thing in common. They keep their personal life free of conflict. A lot is said about techniques to grow the business on the web, but a few talk about personal life.
Until your business reaches at least $10m a year in revenue, the entrepreneur is the business. The business is an extension of the entrepreneur. Paul Graham in his essay talks about the top idea on your mind. What do you think about when you have some time for yourself? What do you think about, in your shower? The thing that you think about gets the most benefit.
If you have personal conflict in your life, it affects your business. The success of your business is directly proportional to your mental state. In your personal life, if you have open loops of conflict with other people close to you such as friends, family, kids, siblings, or co-workers, your business will go for a toss. Because that's what your mind is thinking about all the time instead of thinking about your startup, your work, your branding, and so on.
A lot of people wouldn't behave in a "fair way". You might want to "teach them a lesson", or you are looking for "justice". A pending personal loan, something that unfair happened to you, or someone said something mean. All this is occupying your mind space which is taking away time and energy that could be invested in the creation of content, innovating on product/service, and thinking long term in your business.
Anger at other humans cannot be avoided in general life. But the only way to close that loop is to LET GO. The more "open loops" that you have that bother you, the slower you are going to be with your career growth.
Anger is not something that others inflict on you. Anger is something that you inflict on yourself because you expected others to behave in a certain way, and they didn't. The expectation comes from you and when it is not met, it leads to disappointments. Remember, you don't have the luxury of disappointment.
Entrepreneurs and high-performing professionals do not have the time or the energy to get disappointed with anything. The system doesn't work as you expected it would? Do you think the government could be more helpful to entrepreneurs? Do you think an employee or freelancer could do better? Do you think your friends and family can support you better with what you do?
You can't change anything. You can only change yourself. If a change happens because you changed yourself, great. But either way, the only focus you can afford to give to is yourself.
When you have no open loops in your mind, you can wake up fresh, and get into work. Get creating first thing in the morning. That's why I write one blog post every morning on WinnerTakeAll (this blog). The luxury of a blank mind after you wake up only comes when you have no open loops in your personal life.
Letting go is an investment in your productivity and in your goals. Letting go will always have a good ROI. You are underestimating the cost of your mental space. You don't know what you will create but you can only paint something on a blank canvas. You can only pour coffee in an empty cup.
Personal success is what translates into business success. Most entrepreneurs succeed not because they found a trick or a technique that no one discovered. They succeed with micro-actions that move the needle a little bit every day. You fail because of an accumulation of micro-failures.
You have to find yourself with a "blank space" of time every day. Even if you do not necessarily have personal conflict and disappointments, if you are tangled up in "responsibilities" that are expected of you, it is still a "cost" to your business. Because you are the best asset that your business has. If the asset doesn't perform well, it will not be able to support the asset with adequate income to keep the asset working in the business.
When you focus fully on your work, your work will work on you more than you work on the work. Many disappointments and personal loops will automatically get sorted if you lose yourself in your work.
Think of "letting go" as the cost of doing your work. You cannot hang on to things that take up your precious mindspace.
Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju