Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2013; its references to a recent Quora thread and this week date it to that month.
In a recent Quora thread, a user asked whether weekends really exist for entrepreneurs. It’s an interesting question, given the wide range of answers you could expect.
This week, when we listed the 7 things the most successful people have in common, hard work appeared alongside more hard work. But even if we enjoy our work… what good is success if we’re going to celebrate it alone?
“There are two kinds of people: workers and livers. Workers don’t live, and livers don’t work” (I heard it somewhere). So we need to find the middle ground: a balance that helps us reconcile our personal life with our working life. Michael Wolfe‘s way of managing his time as an entrepreneur is striking, to say the least, because he breaks it down into days, weeks, months, years, decades…
We start from the premise that working too many hours makes each additional hour less and less productive, and that taking breaks makes us more efficient and helps us make better decisions.
Asked whether weekends exist for entrepreneurs, Wolfe is clear: a resounding YES. He adds that it is not only possible but necessary, and that it should be mandatory.
For Wolfe, it’s ridiculous to suggest that an entrepreneur should work every day without a break, although he knows that starting and running a company isn’t easy. So he shares his time management strategy:
1. His day
Wolfe says that every day he picks a couple of things to do and focuses on them 100%, putting all other tasks on a list that he turns to once he has finished the most important ones. Sometimes people want to do so much that they end up doing nothing.
Wolfe knows that exercise is a must for an entrepreneur, so to avoid falling back on the excuse of not having time, he usually gets to the office by bike, on foot or running. One way or another, he exercises every day. If you organise yourself properly, you can usually find time for everything.
2. His week
Wolfe admits that he isn’t always 100% free of work at weekends, but on most Saturdays and Sundays he does everything he can to spend them with friends and family, doing the things he enjoys. His family also gets at least one evening a week, and they get together on Sunday evenings to talk about plans for the week ahead.
3. His year
On top of time off during the holidays and weekend ski trips in the winter months, Wolfe also takes a summer holiday with his family, although he says he works a lot during those holidays while his family rests.
4. His decade
This is the really interesting part: Wolfe says he likes to take a sabbatical year every few years. This may be out of reach for most entrepreneurs, but it is a much-needed reward for any entrepreneur who works hard and has a well-organised business.
I always give the example of Richard Branson, who has built 400 companies in the middle of 15 sabbatical years; Branson himself admits that he runs his companies while sunbathing on his yacht or on some exotic island. That’s the benefit of hiring the right people for your company.
In short, working very hard and taking long breaks is the best model for balancing work and life. The idea is probably not to copy Wolfe’s schedule or his way of managing time, as that would be too complicated. But we can try to work out why we need to work so much harder than our employees for the company to function, always remembering that if the business only works when we are always there, we don’t have a business, we have a job.
Further reading
- You don’t need an original idea to succeed
- 40 universal truths for success
- 3 inspiring stories about how 3 great companies started
Featured image: kansasphoto, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
