Debunking Yet Another Lie Social Media Tells You About 'Being Productive' People who confuse being frenetic with accomplishing important work don't succeed.
By Daniel DiPiazza Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
What's something that, at one point in your life, you believed to be 100 percent true..but now you no longer believe?
I'll go first. My limiting belief was about what it means to hustle/work hard.
I used to think that staying up late to finish something was the best solution to getting things done. Or that I needed to work 12+ hours a day on my dreams if I ever wanted to see them realized.
I thought that if I wasn't willing to work until all hours of the day and night, I wasn't a true "hustler" -- and I wasn't cut out to be an entrepreneur. This misconception was aided by all the social media culture surrounding entrepreneurship that made me feel like crap if I wasn't doing something for my business every single second of the day.
Related: Busting the 6 Myths of Entrepreneurship
If I tried to work nonstop, like social media had me believe was a necessary condition of entrepreneurship, I always ended up exhausted and resenting the work instead of enjoying it. Worst of all, I STILL fell behind on my damn work! Always!
Now, I realize that for me, working myself to death isn't the key to success.
Related: The 10 Most Shockingly Untrue Entrepreneurial Myths, Exposed
I don't work all day, every day. The Rich20 team works 12-6 Monday through Friday. Sometimes we work a bit later if we're launching a product. Sometimes we don't come in until 1pm. We don't typically work weekends.
And yet...business is improving 10x. Counterintuitive, right? Burning the midnight oil by working until 2am or 3am is not the best strategy.
If I'm working on something -- unless it's absolutely mission critical...like a crucial business meltdown -- I'm much better off shutting down the work for the night and getting up refreshed in the morning.
Cramming doesn't work.
Didn't in high school, doesn't now. And most things (read: 99 percent of tasks) aren't so time sensitive that they can't wait the extra 6-8 hours for you to recharge and be at your best.
Realizing this has stopped me from going deep into the "red zone" like I used to. I make far fewer mistakes, feel more refreshed and don't hate my life.
The cool thing is that by working fewer hours -- although I spend less time in the office -- I force myself to really prioritize the important things. More importantly I allow myself to DE-PRIORITIZE the unimportant things (or delegate them).
Related: The 5 Myths About Entrepreneurship
All of this improves my life and makes me a lot happier -- which actually improves the quality of my work when I am here at the office for those 5-6 hours per day.
Once I decided to reject the idea that 24/7 work was the only way to become successful in business, I opened up an entirely new world of possibilities for myself.
Limiting belief DESTROYED.
