An epic win a day or HOW TO run efficiently the endurance race of entrepreneurship
One of the hardest things in entrepreneurship is to maintain your motivation all along your adventure. Even if you deeply love your business idea, there will always be some situations where things go wrong, or at least things do not occur like you wished them to. Obstacles will be all along your way and you will need to stay strong to face them the best you can.
Entrepreneurship is all a question of having a strong mind. Strong enough to not give up. Strong enough to not listening negative people telling you that it is not realistic or too risky. Strong enough to not be sad when you have to work hard while some others go on holiday. Strong enough to understand that your family does not go the same pace as you. Strong enough to face suppliers that are awaiting to be paid, or unhappy customers for factors you cannot do anything about as you don't control them.
This is my coping method. I wanted to share it with you because it works well for me so far. I call it the "Epic win a day". As you probably know I run my business ventures at the same time I work full time. So I don't have time to do everything every day. I need to organise myself to be efficient enough and see progress but I also need to make sure I don't fall in a burn out.
I recently wrote an article about doing 10 actions a day, mixing hard and easy tasks. "A epic win a day" is complementary of this technic and it is about doing one hard task a day.
What is an epic win?
I saw that terminology in a TED video. This is the definition Jane McGonial gives about it:
"An epic win is an outcome that is so extraordinarily positive, you had no idea it was even possible until you achieved it".
Take a look at the video. She does not apply it to entrepreneurship specifically but it is very inspirational.
How to achieve one epic win a day?
1. Make your list of 10 actions a day. At that level you have only a vague idea of their complexity. At least one of those actions may be more complexe than you thought. It may be so complex that it will take a lot of time to achieve. Allow yourself one and only ONE complex task to manage each day.
2. Go from the top of your list and try to do each of them. And this is the important first rule: If you already spent a lot of time on one of the tasks you planned, don't block on that task for now. Delay it for the day after. You need to achieve it the day after but you don't need to make more than one difficult task a day.
3. You now need to tackle one of those complex tasks. You know you are capable of finding the solutions. Stick with this problem no matter the time takes and get up after failure and try to resolve it again. And remember: once this one is achieved, you need to manage simpler tasks and if the next one gets hard as well postpone it for the day after.
And what if it is so complex that you want to give up? Few tips:
- Go on the next task of your list and then come back to this one when you are more relax.
- Take a break to make a call, go online and spent a bit (I said a bit) of time on social media
- Do something you like for few minutes (except smocking :D)
- Basically: give a break to your brain and then try again.
Endurance Race
Why is it so important to limit yourself on one problem a day? Because your brain is not capable of managing too many complex problems in a day. It is much much more efficient to do one thing great than lots of things in an unperfect way.
This is like running. It is not only a question of being first at a single sprint race. it is about doing an endurance race. You need to spare yourself and also get satisfaction in what you are doing.
Don't try to put a lot on your shoulders in a short period of time. Be the best of yourself in a long run.
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