These are two things I believe to be true about work:
1. Work acts like a gas that will fill any part of your life it has access to
2. Your to-do list is a treadmill
I lived both of these while running my business, and denied it longer than I should have. These two ideas have resurfaced lately through conversations with entrepreneurs that I work with.
This Spring, I took on an advisory role with a firm that works with entrepreneurs here in southern BC. It lets me work directly with owners and see inside industries that I’ve never encountered before. These entrepreneurs span in age from early 20’s to mid-70’s and they run restaurants, retail stores, farms, vineyards, construction companies and everything else you find in a mountain town.
One thing is clear after 100+ hours of advising conversations: most entrepreneurs fail to set boundaries for themselves.
Imagine you’re in a conversation with your friend and they said this about their boss:
They’re making me work 60 hours a week.
They won’t let me book any time off because things don’t go well when I’m away.
They keep piling new responsibilities on my plate and are never willing to hire someone else to help out.
You’d tell them to start looking for a new job. You’d say they deserve better. You’d call their boss a jerk.
That’s how a lot of entrepreneurs describe their life. They’re both people in the story. They’re the employee taking it and the boss dishing it out. The dream was working for yourself and the reality is that you’re the worst boss you’ve ever had.
Which leads me back to the two things I know to be true about work.
Work acts like a gas
Without clear boundaries of time and space, work expands to fill every part of our life. It’s not intentional, it happens slowly over time. Wake up and have a quick look at email. Put in a few hours after dinner to catch up. Do the admin work on Saturday because the week was slammed.
As entrepreneurs, we have to get things done. Long days are sometimes inevitable. The problem is that what starts as the exception becomes the rule. We lose track of why we wanted this in the first place: to be our own boss with autonomy over our time.
That means deliberately choosing when you engage and when you stop. Clear non-negotiables about where work ends and life begins. Creating constraints protects our non-work life and sets us up to perform at our best when we’re at work.
The to-do list treadmill
Entrepreneurs work long hours and never take time away because of their to-do list. Successful businesses operate on projects and tasks. That’s the day-to-day work we’re always doing.
The to-do list never ends.
If you reach the end of your to-do list, that means you’re out of business. Even then there’s still a long to-do list. I recently spoke with a founder who shut down their business and it took six months just to work through the closing tasks.
So what are we to do with a list that continually serves up new tasks? Treat it like a treadmill. You step onto a treadmill knowing how far or how long you’ll run. When you reach that distance or time, you hit ‘stop’ and you step off and go about the rest of your day.
There’s always more to do. That makes it hard for goal-driven entrepreneurs to let up. Once we accept that the list never ends, we can step off the treadmill and come back tomorrow.
Work can take over your life and there is no end to your to-do list. Oof. Who wants to be an entrepreneur?
This can be a burden or it can be liberating. If we’re deliberate in creating boundaries and recognize that we’re playing a long-term game, it sets us up to do our best work. You could end up being the best boss you’ve ever had.