Entrepreneur

2.MY PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS

Typically, entrepreneurs have a huge workload and a great sense of personal responsibility, and this combination can be both physically exhausting and mentally stressful. Therefore, in our opinion, you should consider your level of personal effectiveness carefully. People are obviously different, and everyone should find their own, individual way of doing things, but in this chapter we review a number of tools and approaches that may help you to deal with the work pressure and stress that being an entrepreneur might cause. These approaches have worked for both ourselves and others.

Our first and perhaps most important observation concerning workload and stress is that many entrepreneurs often have a partner and perhaps even children. Whether they like it or not, their entrepreneurial jobs affect these people and therefore we recommend you clearly agree with your partner on which parts of your private lifestyle you want to maintain and which you will have to alter. Perhaps you want to maintain almost exclusively everything that deals with your kids but might want to stop many of your dinners with friends? This you need to agree on with your partner. And if you have small children, one tip that has worked for both of us is to spend time with them in the morning because when you come home in the evening they are probably already asleep.

Decide how to tackle the unpleasant parts of your job

Especially at the beginning of your entrepreneurial project, ...