RANDOM THOUGHTS #103: ENTREPRENEUR'S DISEASE
Steve Cole reports: During my time at business boot camp, I learned about a malady I have always known I had, but had never really understood: Entrepreneur's Disease.
This condition affects people who run small businesses that employ and require a lot of creativity. Basically, it's a condition of having so much work, and so many different kinds of work, that it doesn't all get done. There is no cure, but organization, delegation, and prioritization can reduce the symptoms to manageable levels.
Some symptoms include:
1. Constantly inventing and revising time-management systems in a perpetually failing effort to get more things done and avoid having things that never got done bite you in the behind. (At least I delegate to Leanna things that would send me to jail, such as filing and paying taxes.) [All I can offer as a solution is "find one that works and stick with it."]
2. Using a system in which "If I am waiting for somebody else to do something, it's not my problem." With too much to do, anything we send to someone else (such as a request for information, or instructions to do something) is no longer on our overloaded "to do" list. Sooner or later, the requested information or work will arrive and the overall project will go back on our "active to do list" but until then, it's just not our problem. The problem is that this assumes that everybody else is less incompetent and less busy and less disorganized than we are, and can result in waking up the day before (or after) the Big Deadline to find that we never finished a major project because somebody else never answered the request for information or sent something we needed. [My solution here is to keep such directives and requests in my Email outbasket until the designated person answers the question or does the thing. Every week I ask people I am waiting for to do what I asked them to do.]
3. Ignoring, consciously or otherwise, those of our many jobs that we really aren't that interested in or good at to start with. It's also incredibly easy to ignore several of your jobs while focusing on one of them. My blindspot is marketing. I hate doing it and just won't unless somebody forces me to do it, since I have little self-discipline. [A solution I have found it to budget a block of time for each job, and not allow other jobs to intrude on that time, or these small annoying jobs to use other time. The problem is that I don't have the self-discipline to respect that time block, and other demands on my time often confiscate it.]
4. Constantly apologizing for things that did not get done, or explaining why they did not get done. After writing four or five apologies, I've used more time apologizing than the time doing the thing would have taken. [I don't have a specific solution here. If I had time to do it the first time, I would not have had to spend time writing apologies. Maybe what I need is a generic apology form letter I can just cut and paste?]
5. Putting stuff on the schedule or the TO DO list that you know won't get done just because not putting it on the list would look bad and would be politically damaging. This happens every time I try to do any kind of list in public. Telling somebody that they aren't going to get the product they want, or that the product in question won't include the thing they want, gets them upset. Putting that item on a list of "goals" at least gives them time to find something else they think they want and maybe forgot that one. Rarely works, but at least it delays the angry emails a bit. [The only suggestion I can make is to keep the published schedule down to the next few months and have a separate "future outlook" file that describes other projects while making it clear there is no firm schedule for them.]
6. Assuming that anything that CAN be done SHOULD be done. Sure, I could do a product about this or that subject. That doesn't mean it would sell. Even if it would sell, that doesn't mean that other products would not be more profitable. [I have this symptom under control, and have had no problem explaining to people why they won't see a certain product in print. All I can recommend to you is to be firm and realistic and to take the time to explain why it won't happen.]
7. Failing to re-invent yourself to respond to the market. We're still doing the same "kind of games" we were doing back in the day when SFB was the #1 game in the industry. Now, games are simpler, faster, and have fancier components. [We need to be doing games like Tribbles vs. Klingons and quick-playing card games, not another 300-page book that sells 300 copies.]
8. Getting into debt. Debt can kill a company because the interest payments eat up too much income. But what kills an entrepreneur is a long to-do list that keeps getting longer. The extra work needed because of that "to do list debt" is the killer. Time spent explaining to customers why this or that hasn't been done is not time spent actually doing it. Time and money spent making up for the things that didn't get done is time and money not spent creating new income. Things that got half-done produce less useful results than things done well. Running as hard as you can just to keep in place means you need to reorganize what you're doing, how you're doing it, and who you're assigning it to so that your to-do list gets shorter not longer. [I don't have a problem with financial debt, and we don't have any. To avoid that, just don't borrow money and don't spend money you don't have. Do the best you can with the money you have. As for the time debt issue, I've obviously failed pretty miserably on that one.]
9. Falling into psychic energy sinks. Sometimes, something that is taking a lot of mental energy (or producing a lot of stomach acid) isn't really important but you just don't want to lose. [One option for an ongoing email argument is to just delete the next one you get unread. You aren't upset by it and they think you gave up and let them win. Another option is to "save" rather than "que" all angry emails and send them at the last minute so you don't have anger feeding back and forth in continual exchanges that interrupt your work.]
10. Allowing yourself to enjoy a meaningless accomplishment. Everybody loves a feeling of accomplishment, but really, if it didn't put work in the finished file or products on the shelf or money in the bank, it wasn't really an accomplishment. Certainly, you need to devote time to cleaning out clutter, but don't let that time expand to fill a whole day, giving you a feeling that you accomplished something when you actually didn't. [Force yourself to do the quota of productive work first and the feel good projects later.]
This condition affects people who run small businesses that employ and require a lot of creativity. Basically, it's a condition of having so much work, and so many different kinds of work, that it doesn't all get done. There is no cure, but organization, delegation, and prioritization can reduce the symptoms to manageable levels.
Some symptoms include:
1. Constantly inventing and revising time-management systems in a perpetually failing effort to get more things done and avoid having things that never got done bite you in the behind. (At least I delegate to Leanna things that would send me to jail, such as filing and paying taxes.) [All I can offer as a solution is "find one that works and stick with it."]
2. Using a system in which "If I am waiting for somebody else to do something, it's not my problem." With too much to do, anything we send to someone else (such as a request for information, or instructions to do something) is no longer on our overloaded "to do" list. Sooner or later, the requested information or work will arrive and the overall project will go back on our "active to do list" but until then, it's just not our problem. The problem is that this assumes that everybody else is less incompetent and less busy and less disorganized than we are, and can result in waking up the day before (or after) the Big Deadline to find that we never finished a major project because somebody else never answered the request for information or sent something we needed. [My solution here is to keep such directives and requests in my Email outbasket until the designated person answers the question or does the thing. Every week I ask people I am waiting for to do what I asked them to do.]
3. Ignoring, consciously or otherwise, those of our many jobs that we really aren't that interested in or good at to start with. It's also incredibly easy to ignore several of your jobs while focusing on one of them. My blindspot is marketing. I hate doing it and just won't unless somebody forces me to do it, since I have little self-discipline. [A solution I have found it to budget a block of time for each job, and not allow other jobs to intrude on that time, or these small annoying jobs to use other time. The problem is that I don't have the self-discipline to respect that time block, and other demands on my time often confiscate it.]
4. Constantly apologizing for things that did not get done, or explaining why they did not get done. After writing four or five apologies, I've used more time apologizing than the time doing the thing would have taken. [I don't have a specific solution here. If I had time to do it the first time, I would not have had to spend time writing apologies. Maybe what I need is a generic apology form letter I can just cut and paste?]
5. Putting stuff on the schedule or the TO DO list that you know won't get done just because not putting it on the list would look bad and would be politically damaging. This happens every time I try to do any kind of list in public. Telling somebody that they aren't going to get the product they want, or that the product in question won't include the thing they want, gets them upset. Putting that item on a list of "goals" at least gives them time to find something else they think they want and maybe forgot that one. Rarely works, but at least it delays the angry emails a bit. [The only suggestion I can make is to keep the published schedule down to the next few months and have a separate "future outlook" file that describes other projects while making it clear there is no firm schedule for them.]
6. Assuming that anything that CAN be done SHOULD be done. Sure, I could do a product about this or that subject. That doesn't mean it would sell. Even if it would sell, that doesn't mean that other products would not be more profitable. [I have this symptom under control, and have had no problem explaining to people why they won't see a certain product in print. All I can recommend to you is to be firm and realistic and to take the time to explain why it won't happen.]
7. Failing to re-invent yourself to respond to the market. We're still doing the same "kind of games" we were doing back in the day when SFB was the #1 game in the industry. Now, games are simpler, faster, and have fancier components. [We need to be doing games like Tribbles vs. Klingons and quick-playing card games, not another 300-page book that sells 300 copies.]
8. Getting into debt. Debt can kill a company because the interest payments eat up too much income. But what kills an entrepreneur is a long to-do list that keeps getting longer. The extra work needed because of that "to do list debt" is the killer. Time spent explaining to customers why this or that hasn't been done is not time spent actually doing it. Time and money spent making up for the things that didn't get done is time and money not spent creating new income. Things that got half-done produce less useful results than things done well. Running as hard as you can just to keep in place means you need to reorganize what you're doing, how you're doing it, and who you're assigning it to so that your to-do list gets shorter not longer. [I don't have a problem with financial debt, and we don't have any. To avoid that, just don't borrow money and don't spend money you don't have. Do the best you can with the money you have. As for the time debt issue, I've obviously failed pretty miserably on that one.]
9. Falling into psychic energy sinks. Sometimes, something that is taking a lot of mental energy (or producing a lot of stomach acid) isn't really important but you just don't want to lose. [One option for an ongoing email argument is to just delete the next one you get unread. You aren't upset by it and they think you gave up and let them win. Another option is to "save" rather than "que" all angry emails and send them at the last minute so you don't have anger feeding back and forth in continual exchanges that interrupt your work.]
10. Allowing yourself to enjoy a meaningless accomplishment. Everybody loves a feeling of accomplishment, but really, if it didn't put work in the finished file or products on the shelf or money in the bank, it wasn't really an accomplishment. Certainly, you need to devote time to cleaning out clutter, but don't let that time expand to fill a whole day, giving you a feeling that you accomplished something when you actually didn't. [Force yourself to do the quota of productive work first and the feel good projects later.]
posted by Federation Commander at 9:14 AM
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