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How can someone work every waking hour???

COSenior

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I'm using the Pomodoro technique, and I get much more done that before, working the same amount of hours, or even less. It's not about quantity, but quality. If you work for 10-12 hours a day but don't make the most of that time by having laser focus, then there is no point in forcing yourself to sit on the chair for that amount of time. What would you prefer, 2x, or even 3x productivity for 30 minutes intervals in, let's say 8 hours, or 1x for 12 hours?
I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure sleeping 3 hours every night for a long period leads to, at least, serious health problems. In some extreme cases, the lack of sleep leads to plain death (mentioned on Learning How To Learn course on Coursera). If you want to be an entrepreneur and play the long run, you need to take care of yourself. There might be some exceptional days when you can sleep for 3 hours, but that's not even half of the sleep a normal person needs.

I think that being obsessed with working "many hours" is a big mistake. How do I know? Because I've been obsessed as well, and I'm still trying to get rid of that mentality. But I'm starting to see that's the wrong metric. I'm using the Pomodoro technique, and I get much more done that before, working the same amount of hours, or even less. It's not about quantity, but quality. If you work for 10-12 hours a day but don't make the most of that time by having laser focus, then there is no point in forcing yourself to sit on the chair for that amount of time. What would you prefer, 2x, or even 3x productivity for 30 minutes intervals in, let's say 8 hours, or 1x for 12 hours?

I also read recently that after more than 50 hours per week, productivity declines too much to pay off the effort and the cost it creates over time.
Absolutely right! Sleeping fewer than 7 or 8 hours is a really good way to destroy your health. Your body repairs itself during sleep. Give it time to do so.

I also use the Pomodoro technique, though I work better in 50-minute sprints. I believe you must determine your own pace, but taking a break of ten or fifteen minutes between sprints is essential for physical health, at the very least, especially if your work is sedentary. I use a Chrome extension pomodoro timer that lets you set up different length work periods, so I select the length of time I expect to take to complete a task (between 15 minutes and 50) and focus on that task until the timer stops me. No Facebook, no Fastlane Forum :smile2:, no phone calls (I silence my cell phone and ignore the landline), nothing but that one task. You'd be surprised what you can do when your focus is complete.

One thing you mentioned has me wondering. You said you spend most of your time figuring out what step to take next or waiting for results after you take action so you can move to the next action. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like a lot of sitting around waiting. What could you be doing that is related to your business, productive, and not busywork? Without knowing your business or what are the actions for which you are waiting for results, I can't make specific suggestions. However, I suspect you could at the very least be reading about best practices in copywriting, advertising and marketing, time management, etc. As Stephen Covey directed in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, sharpen the saw.
 
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DistressedDenim

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Absolutely right! Sleeping fewer than 7 or 8 hours is a really good way to destroy your health. Your body repairs itself during sleep. Give it time to do so.

I also use the Pomodoro technique, though I work better in 50-minute sprints. I believe you must determine your own pace, but taking a break of ten or fifteen minutes between sprints is essential for physical health, at the very least, especially if your work is sedentary. I use a Chrome extension pomodoro timer that lets you set up different length work periods, so I select the length of time I expect to take to complete a task (between 15 minutes and 50) and focus on that task until the timer stops me. No Facebook, no Fastlane Forum :smile2:, no phone calls (I silence my cell phone and ignore the landline), nothing but that one task. You'd be surprised what you can do when your focus is complete.

One thing you mentioned has me wondering. You said you spend most of your time figuring out what step to take next or waiting for results after you take action so you can move to the next action. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like a lot of sitting around waiting. What could you be doing that is related to your business, productive, and not busywork? Without knowing your business or what are the actions for which you are waiting for results, I can't make specific suggestions. However, I suspect you could at the very least be reading about best practices in copywriting, advertising and marketing, time management, etc. As Stephen Covey directed in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, sharpen the saw.
For my business, the most productive thing I could be doing during that time would simply be building more businesses like it because my business is sort of a cross between a business and a blog.

Problem is, I'm not sure if the strategy I'm using to build these is good, because it takes about six months to start seeing results from your actions.

Question is do I have faith that my strategy is good and keep building more, or do I wait about three more months to see if my strategy is good before I build more...

I think I'm just going to "wait" three months, using the free time to learn, look for business ideas that are more ambitious, etc.
 

COSenior

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For my business, the most productive thing I could be doing during that time would simply be building more businesses like it because my business is sort of a cross between a business and a blog.

Problem is, I'm not sure if the strategy I'm using to build these is good, because it takes about six months to start seeing results from your actions.

Question is do I have faith that my strategy is good and keep building more, or do I wait about three more months to see if my strategy is good before I build more...

I think I'm just going to "wait" three months, using the free time to learn, look for business ideas that are more ambitious, etc.
Good luck with that.
 

G-Man

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Walmart employs 2.1 million people. Let's say the average worker puts in 30 hours per week. That means the Walton family gets 63 MILLION hours worth of work done in ONE WEEK. I'm not sure how many lifetimes that is but delegation is key. Nobody can do it all themselves.
I honestly need to have this framed and put above my desk. Failure to delegate is probably the primary source of misery and under-achievement in my life. Rep ++++
 
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Fassina

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Trading hours for money is a bad idea, you want to disconnect both as soon as you can.

PS. Elon Musk probably counts exercise, eating lunch, reading books, grooming, and commute as work. Don't get me wrong I love the guy, but the definition of work is pretty vague and can mean anything from sitting on a table and answering a phone once in a while to doing construction work.. He probably counts work as anything that's not a hobby
 

WJK

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There are all of these people that say a real entrepreneur should be working from 5:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m...

How is that even possible?

So far, the majority of my entrepreneurial experience has consisted of 1. figuring out what to work on next to get the best results, or 2. waiting for results after taking action so I can move on to taking more action.

Should I be filling the empty space with a new business? Will things speed up when I have a decent, consistent income to reinvest in my business?
No, working that much will make you a lot less productive. Work in sprints and then rest between the sprints. Quiet time allows for creativity and thought. Sleep allows the subconscious to work -- and that's where inspiration comes from. Work less and work smarter.
 

biophase

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I really think people work very inefficiently and don't realize it.

For example, yesterday I photoshopped 7 photos that took me 2 hours to do. I know this because 2 1hr Netflix shows started and stopped before I finished.

You have to ask yourself, is photoshopping for 2 hours the best use of your time? The answer is different for everyone.

For someone running a 10M company and works 60 hours a week: He probably should have outsourced it because he has high ROI things to do.

For someone just starting out without alot money: Yes, because this task would have cost him $140 (assuming $20/photo) and he can't make $70/hour doing anything else.

For me: Yes, because is was Xmas and stores were closed and I wanted to relax and I like photoshopping.

Now if I were super busy, this is the last thing that I would do. I would have had an employee do it, or hired an outside company.

So technically I worked on this for 2 hours, but I could have worked on this task for only 10 minutes by delegating it. Then I could have spent the next 1 hour 50 minutes watching TV.
 
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luniac

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too lazy to be a slowlaner man :D
 

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