work harder, work smarter
I’m sitting inside the offices of Awesome Inc at 3:00 am writing this blog post. My business partner Luke has just fallen asleep on the couches in the break room. We have to be up at 7:30 to give a presentation. I’m thinking that I shouldn’t even be spending the 30 minutes to write this blog entry because it is a distraction to work I could be doing. That’s the mentality that I have now about being continuously productivity - I don’t drive any where without making a phone call, when I fix and eat a meal, I’m reading an email, if I show up five minutes early to something I get mad because I just wasted five minutes. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, healthy or unhealthy; it’s just how it is. I’ve been called out by it several times by friends and family. They might say, “Don’t you ever just sit and relax?” I look back at them and wonder what they actually mean. Do they mean watch a movie, read a book, or literally just sit there? I respond with, “No, I’d always rather be doing something productive (or at least fun and active)?”
My typical day looks like this:
- wake up late morning.
- work for 7-8 hours.
- go play/coach soccer for 2-3 hours.
- go back to work for 6-7 hours (following the rule of 4)
The rule of 4 states that one out of every 4 nights instead of going back to work I do something fun with my friends/girlfriend/family. The past few weeks this has included activities such as rappelling into a pool, midnight golf, and running through the fountains downtown.
The reason I decided to write this blog post was that I think there is more to the success formula than what I am doing. No one works harder than me. However, there are people that are more successful than me…and some are even younger than me. I think it has to do with how smart they work. I consider myself a relatively smart person. I guess I just need to figure out a way to work smarter too. I’m open to suggestions.
- for the record, I love my work so working 13-15 hours each day, often through the late hours of the night isn’t something I mind at all. Most days I look forward to 10 pm, which means I get to crank out 6 hours of uninterrupted work.
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July 5th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Brian,
I love this post!
As a fellow workaholic entrepreneur, I too find myself squeezing out productivity out of every moment.
Lately I have been setting up a task for completion during lunch (sometimes dinner). It is the perfect time to do that “extra” thing that doesn’t fit with other stuff… and the pressure to do it quickly means that it actually gets done.
P.S. I want to adopt the Rule of 4 you talked about…. good call
Innovate.