Early in my career as an entrepreneur, I took a three-year training program designed to help me “manage my stress”.
Anyone who has felt the call of the hustle knows it can be invigorating, but also scattered, frantic, and undirected. You hustle here, you get distracted, you hustle there, and by the time you come to the end of the day, week, or year, you have a lot of hustle but not much to show for. /P>
The training program I attended was led by a dynamic duo – a young man and a woman. The tactics they used, such as sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion, were extreme and questionable, yet training them was the most important key to my eventual entrepreneurial success.
Although the program is not available to everyone, the lessons I learned as a result apply to anyone who wants to focus their effort for better results.
The program? Maternity.
The lessons I learned as a result are applicable to anyone who wants to focus their effort for better results.
It was July 2010 when, after months of planning, I approached my boss and let him know that I would be quitting my job and starting my own business. It was both thrilling and terrifying.
A week after quitting, we found out we were pregnant with our first child. Which meant that not only was I going to be a brand-new entrepreneur, but also a first-time stay-at-home mom with a son and, shortly after, a daughter. And so the training began.
I shoved my dream early in the morning before the babies woke up, while they were napping, and, if I wasn't too exhausted, after they fell asleep. With only these small working windows, success depended much less on the quantity of grind than on the quality.
I worked as a mother. Here are five things the training taught me that have helped me focus and master my business ever since, and can help you no matter who you are.
1. Do it backwards:
Like any entrepreneur, I had very specific financial goals that I wanted to achieve. I also had a limited time to engage in the actions that would generate income. Therefore, I'm sure to the surprise of my seventh-grade geometry teacher, I did the math. I figured out what I wanted to do in a year and divided it by what I estimated my work generated per hour to get the number of hours I needed to work that year.
For example, if you want to earn $100,000 per year and value your work at around $100 per hour, you would need to work 1,000 hours per year. Equipped with this number, you can make your plan.
2. Make it visible:
Once you have the number of hours you need to work to reach your goal, plan your weeks so that they are easy to see.
I put mine on my schedule — get up an hour before everyone else (five hours a week), work through naps (seven hours a week), stay up an hour after bedtime (five hours a week), sneak into a coffee on Saturday (three hours a week). Whatever you do, make your schedule visible to hold yourself accountable.
3. Do what matters most:
Figuring out what work you will be doing during those targeted hours is perhaps the most important part of training. When it was time for one of my scheduled hours of focused hustle, I didn't waste it on social media or sending logistical emails. I spent that hour on what mattered most to my business – at the time, creating content and business relationships, and nothing else. If distraction crept into one of my sacred hours, I could not claim it as an hour of work. I should find another hour somewhere to make up for that.
4. Set a timer:
Because sometimes focusing on the hard part of the agitation doesn't always add up to immediate results, it's best if focused agitation is measured in time in versus time out. Set a timer and make sure every hour really counts.
5. Celebrate:
Results aren't always obvious, and when you work for a limited time, after a few weeks it's easy to feel like you've failed – to think you haven't done as much as you could or should have. . I learned in my intensive motherhood/entrepreneurship training that focused work in and of itself was worth celebrating, and in doing so, I greeted each new week full of hope for what was possible.
>* * *
It's been years since I graduated from the training program. Once they were potty trained, my social kiddos were thrilled to go to preschool for a few hours each day and I was thrilled to have some time to myself. And although my business is vastly different today than it was 10 years ago, this concentrated hubbub system is still my primary mode of operation.
Hustle is good. The excitement with the focus and intensity of a mother whose baby is stirring from their nap and who has yet to finish her blog, is unstoppable.
