So, you decided to become a full-time entrepreneur to finally start living life the way you want it? After all, you’ve read so many stories of how people start a business to make good money and even live the notorious “laptop lifestyle”. “Sweet”, you thought to yourself. “I can do that”, you nodded.
You start off your business journey with hyper-motivation and it seems as if you can keep working forever. But unfortunately, as they say, what goes up must come down, especially in the business world, when things begin to look a bit more difficult than they seemed at first.
Motivation in entrepreneurship
While both, financial freedom and the laptop lifestyle are definitely feasible, many people purposefully make it sound a lot easier than it really is. Mostly it’s because they have their own agenda, like selling another online course or an SEO tool, for example.
Regardless, today I don’t want to be the judge. I don’t want to talk about whom to listen to and follow, and whom to avoid. Instead, I want to expand on your plan of action when your motivation in entrepreneurship is at its lowest. I want to share with you a few tips you can use when you have a difficult time figuring out how to stay focused in business.
Also, know this – It’s completely normal to feel the loss of motivation in entrepreneurship. Feeling this way does NOT mean automatically that you’ve chosen then the wrong road for yourself. It happens to absolutely everyone that has decided to do business.
Monotonous tasks, day after day of work without weekends, lonely Friday evenings, adversity and not being able to make much money – are all typical for any entrepreneur. The goal is to live through these periods of life and to keep moving on no matter what.
How to Stay Focused in Business
So, how to stay focused in business? Below are the 5 tips on what to do when feeling burned out, stressed or simply tired.
1. Put it on hold
I understand that often we have tasks that need to be done, that cannot be put away under any circumstances. Nonetheless, you absolutely MUST find some time for yourself. This is especially true for those of us that think that every single task must be done right at the moment. And if it isn’t, we feel like we are procrastinating. I am often like that myself, and it does me more harm than good.
If it really is so that you are in the middle of something important, but the motivation to keep going isn’t there, make a promise to yourself that as soon as you are ready with your last big task, you will take time off.
Recommended: Why Meditation Is So Life Changing: 6 Reasons to Meditate Every Day
How much time you take off is fully up to you. See how much time you can afford to take off. Moreover, when you do go on a break, on vacation, DO NOT do it halfway. Be 100% of the time away from your business. Let your mind loose. Taking time off will restart your brain and you will get back most of that entrepreneur motivation.
Another recommendation is that no matter how much work you have every single week, leave at least one full day for yourself and your family when you do not do anything related to your business. And if you really can’t do that either, get a virtual assistant (VA) that can work on your behalf one day a week.
2. Be creative and switch things around
Also, one other thing that really helps when there is no energy to work anymore in your business is to switch things around.
Now, I do not know what kind of business you have, so I cannot for sure say what you can switch around, but I’ll use a few examples from my life.
I used to sell on Amazon, and sometimes I got really tired of doing product research. So instead of spending a whole day researching as I would normally do, I split the activity into three separate days. Sure, that’s not the most efficient approach, but at least it doesn’t affect my emotional health negatively.
Another example is my blog, the one that you are on now. Sometimes, because of an upcoming affiliate launch, I need to focus on writing weekly about the same topic for two or even three months straight. As you can imagine, that can also get very old very fast.
In the past, I would stay on course no matter what. But that did a lot of damage to my overall motivation. Now, if I need to, even in the middle of the promotion, I will create a blog post about the easiest, most attractive topic for me just to cool down my mind. It helps tremendously.
There are many other things I can do to make my life easier by switching things around. I can:
- Make a shorter blog post than usual
- Create a blog post without a YouTube video attached to it
- Not write anything new for my blog, but focus on promoting my older material
- Learn some new SEO strategies instead
The options go on and on. Find what works best for you. Any routine that you fanatically follow for a long time can and probably will kill your motivation in entrepreneurship sooner or later.
Entrepreneur – A crazy person who risks their own money for freedom, rather than exchanging their freedom for money.
3. Eat that frog
I do this one a lot, too. I procrastinate, and then I go on doing the easiest things first, leaving the most challenging tasks until the very deadline. Then they all pile up and I feel extremely stressed, which directly affects my motivation.
In his book – “Eat That Frog!“, Brian Tracy shares a lot of strategies on how you can avoid procrastination, and therefore learn to enjoy your work more. I highly recommend it.
In a nutshell, DO THE HARDEST TASKS FIRST, get it over with!
4. Batch it!
This strategy I learned from Amy Porterfield.
Because she has her own podcast, she knows how exhausting it can sometimes be to create those podcast episodes and then to edit them. So instead of creating an episode every single week, she creates them in batches. If I recall correctly, she can do 6 whole episodes in one day, and then have 5 weeks freed up for other work.
Sure, 6 podcast episodes in one day is a ton of work, but think about the amount of time you will have freed up.
Also, when you work for longer periods of time and do it passionately, there is a good chance that you will be in a “state of flow”, which will make your work seem even easier. On the other hand, if you work for only an hour at a time, it’s very hard to reach that state of mind when ideas flow seamlessly.
So if there is something that you must do on a weekly basis that maybe you don’t particularly enjoy, try doing those tasks in batches.
5. Delegate
Finally, on the list of how to stay focused in business and to gain that motivation in entrepreneurship back, delegate your tasks to someone else.
No, this does not mean hiring full-time employees. Instead, it means going to websites like Fiverr or Upwork, and finding virtual assistants that can do some of the most basic tasks for you.
As I said, it doesn’t need to be anything complicated. Give your VA work that is simple, but monotonous.
Now, you may be thinking to yourself that you don’t need a VA because you can’t afford it or that you don’t have any “simple” tasks to delegate.
How about no? I object. Every business has monotonous tasks that are easy to do, but take a lot of your precious time away that you can spend doing things that are more important to your growth as an entrepreneur.
1. Virtual assistants are cheap.
You can find a non-expensive VA from the Philippines that speaks English perfectly. You also don’t need to have them working for you 30 hours a week. Start with 1-5 hours a week and see how it goes.
2. There is always work for a VA.
You may think that you can do everything by yourself, and you may be right. But the thing is that every task, even the easiest one, takes away from your energy and therefore daily motivation. By delegating even the most basic stuff, you are freeing space in your mind that can be used for other activities that actually make you money.
I’ve hired VAs myself, and they have been of tremendous help.
So, these were my 5 tips on how to stay focused in business. And if you ask me why I wrote specifically about this topic this time, it’s because I needed a break myself. This topic is easy for me to think about and it helped me refill my entrepreneurial motivation. 🙂
If you have any questions, feel free to drop them down in the comment section below.
Thank you for stopping by and good luck!
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