Entrepreneurial time blindness
It's just a little bit endemic
There’s not one of the 150-odd business owners that I’ve interviewed for the Unemployed & Afraid podcast that hasn’t suffered from some sort of time blindness, and it’s getting in the way of us feeling successful about what we’re achieving.
Sitting here in my home office / studio typing this for you I can see half a dozen post-it notes and to do lists. These aren’t small things like email the accountant or follow up that client - these are big long-tail projects like:
Develop the Podast Guest Strategy digital resource
Finish the (epic) Hack Your Own PR programme
And develop, record and produce a brand new spin off series of the pod I’m creating for you
So why, at the beginning of a new week, a new year, or under some self imposed timeline, do I decide that I can knock all of these off in the blink of an eye? Especially as they’ve been on said list for around 3 months already.
This goes for the very beginning of a new business venture too.
Sure, we might plan for a tough 3 months as a Freelancer or Consultant while we get our name out there, fact is though there’s a lot of sales cycles that can take 8 weeks or more - that 6 months blows out real quick.
And for product based businesses? Geez, between brand awareness building, getting ads right, and the inevitable product hold ups - all this being after the brand and packaging is sorted - we could be talking 6 months+ before SOME scale of sales start to make their way through. I’ve heard stories from my generous pod guests citing much longer.
Business owners, we’re ambitious as fuck.
And that goes for everyone - whether your business is micro, side-hustle or all in - once we get a taste for it the potential of what we can do seems limitless.
But our time isn’t. And it’s something we tend to joyfully underestimate.
When I see those goals I mentioned up top start to pile up, not moving week after week, it can be disheartening - and lord knows we need all the encouragement we can get and none of the sneaky disheartening things.
A few episodes back in the pod I chatted to Kerryn from Radical Yes! about this concept of time blindness as entrepreneurs - and it’s stayed on my mind since.
Not only do we regularly overcommit ourselves to new things, we grossly underestimate the actual time something will take us.
From the projects to the business itself, I know you’ll 100% get me when I say that for anyone thinking a business will be up and running “within 3 months or so” - please just go ahead and put that timeline in the bin.
We have no idea how long it will actually take. And the time we give ourselves to do all the things is forever undercooked.
So instead of feeling crappy about the things that seem overwhelming, let’s find ways to feel good about small progress on things.
Like that digital resource I know will be so helpful for podcasters that I'm desperate to create - for now all I need to do is make a list of the things I’d need to do for it, then next time I think about it or see the dreaded post-it, I’ll just do one small thing on that list and feel good about it.
Kerryn has an excellent approach for this though that’s worth the consideration. It’s the Japanese practice of writing a 100 year business plan, time scaling things into a 25 year program to get you out of the immediate and short term thinking and desire to take action and complete everything now. That level of perspective can help on the tough days.
She reminded me that, whatever we want to create, you take a tractor and you turn it into a Ferrari - which means to work on your minimum viable product instead of everything perfect all at once and as quick as possible.
You start small and build.
You do small things again and again until you can look back and see all you’ve done - because we might not start if we’re wanting to see the end straight away - find the growth in the brick-by-brick part of it.
We have to have patience, especially when money is involved. None of us are planning to have no money for five years but sometimes that’s what happens, so we focus on building piece-by-piece towards the long term vision (proper long term, not next week long term).
So, are you piling on too big a task to yourself at the moment? Is it really only going to take you a few days to do that thing? And how will you feel if you don’t do it by that timeline?
Should you be disappointed that you’re six months in and not feeling financially stable yet? Or haven’t broken anywhere near even? No - probably not. It’s more likely that the expectations didn’t match the reality and the unknowns that (try as we might) we can’t plan for.
Give yourself a break. Keep making micro growth on one task at a time and perhaps let’s stop looking at the things we haven’t gotten to yet - and rather look back on the things we have done. Because I know there’s an awful lot of those behind us.