I am a workaholic. It’s a term that has been thrown around so much it’s almost gotten it’s own meme. A work day is when we are supposed to be doing work, and I mean work, whether it’s our job or our personal life. I get so caught up in checking my email, checking social media, scheduling meetings or planning our next date, that I forget to be productive in the first place.
Its been said that time management is one of the key reasons we struggle to be productive. A lot of it comes down to the fact that we don’t really have a “job” outside of work. If we were to stop every day for work or for a personal project, then we would not be productive. That is not the case for most of human history.
When you actually have a job that you have to do, you have to do it. Even if you don’t have to do it for a full day, you have to do it. You have to be consistent with your work schedule. That is why most of the top entrepreneurs are notorious for having a long work day.
Workday or workweek. This is the question that most people ask themselves when they first start an entrepreneur. Is my day at work productive or not productive? If it’s not, then I’m not productive. If it is productive, then I’m productive. If I have to go out to dinner or a bar and do nothing in between, then I’m not productive.
For most of us, an entrepreneur is a person who wakes up every day thinking that he or she is productive, and then the day winds down and the next day starts all over. Its just like a normal day at the office. I work from 8am to 4pm. I make a call from 8am to 9am. I have lunch with my co-founder, and make a call from noon to 3pm.
These sorts of days you’ll never be productive. You’ll just be in the office, working on your next idea, trying to get some sleep, and never looking like you’re being productive.
I often read that entrepreneurs are often the most productive people in the world, and that their workdays are the most productive days of their lives. This is because entrepreneurs have the highest levels of commitment to their work, and the best level of self-awareness (or at least I think the best self-awareness). They have a “job”, and its a job that they enjoy and that they are proud of. This helps them be truly productive.
You can have a job that you are proud of and that you enjoy, but if you never work at it you will never have the self-awareness to enjoy it. So while you may think you are always productive, you may be really just being lazy. Just because you feel like you are always productive, that doesn’t mean that you are.
The best example of self-awareness is probably the person who is always working hard and yet is not always productive. This person has the self-awareness to say, “I wonder what the hell I did today?” and try to figure out what caused the day to be a waste of time.
Just because you feel like your work is always productive, that doesnt mean you are. The best self-awareness is the person who is always productive and yet has no self-awareness. This person is the one who knows exactly what he did today and why he did it, and yet is not aware that the day was wasted. Just because you feel like you are always productive, doesnt mean that you are, just that you feel like it is.