Work Less, Not More: Building Your Venture is an Inside Job

When we're venture-building, it can get easy to be pulled into an endless cycle of "shoulds." There is no amount of work that you can do that will satisfy your mind's control over "needing" to do more work. That's because only you are in charge of your outcomes - so your mind thinks that means working harder. 

Working fewer, more focused hours and taking the rest of the day to yourself is the only way to do this venture thing effectively. This is because the endless hamster wheel of grind was built for the working professional, not for a founder. Your most critical shift from employment to being a founder is in remembering that YOU are creating everything from scratch - the new paradigm of work, life, and creation. 

What are the parameters of this? For me, it means creation time 2-3 hours a day, answering any emails that need to be attended to, and taking the rest of my day to myself. To you, it might look like addressing your team outcomes first, and then spending an hour on bigger strategy questions like fundraising. 

However you choose to to do this, keep in mind it will feel "unproductive" at first because we're used to overhyping our nervous systems until they break. The more we slow down and decompress, our outcomes will come easily and our leadership will be foundationally strong.