Why Do Entrepreneurs Struggle With Discipline?
June 16th, 2008 by Monika MundellEntrepreneurs and discipline are polar opposites like day and night, black and white or yin and yang. Funny enough, despite their obvious differences they actually fit together like a fit to measure glove to a hand.
The strange thing is that most entrepreneurs struggle with discipline to the extent of failure. I wanted to know why that is and why we can slave away our days for a boss without so much as a complaint whilst we start to throw tantrums at the earliest convenience when we are in business ourselves and work our butts off.
Looking for a case study
I didn’t have to look far. I was the perfect model for my own study since I have battled with discipline for some time in the past before I (nearly) mastered the art. In that time, my business life was like a freaking roller coaster.
One day I would be up near the clouds, enjoying the sunshine, traveling at massive speeds while tumbling down into absolute depression hell the next.
At the same time I tried to build my first business I also happily run into the open hell of my part time job whenever they needed me, because I was paid a good hourly wage. Despite the fact that I hated my job with a passion, I still kept going back for the money.
Funny enough, at work I was disciplined and as usual a perfectionist while all around me other staff threw sick days, came to work late, didn’t show up at all or even moved at the pace of a snail. And these guys had only just started out in the industry mind you. I felt that I should be the one taking it easy after near 22 years in the job and not them. But here I was, running around like an idiot while getting more and more frustrated.
How stupid is that?! Instead of biting the bullet for good with my business I took the easy way out and continued on a path or self destruction that would send me further into depression. Luckily for me I’m strong and quite thick headed and I managed to pull myself out of this hole without any professional help.
But it could have easily gone the other way too. The question remains, why is it that we struggle to make things happen for our own business while we often give everything in a hated day job.
Crunch time
When I was able to be honest with myself (oh yes, I did kid myself some) I realized that the biggest issue I had was the uncertainty of whether the business was going to work or not.
Also, knowing that I had a guaranteed income kept me going back, despite the fact that it ruined me emotionally. Eventually I couldn’t take any more and that was when I seriously pulled myself together.
In fact I saw myself still cooking and half heartedly trying to build a business when I was 60 and that wasn’t a pretty picture. By then I would have truly had to succumb to a shrink and I wasn’t going to have any of it, so pulling together was the only way out for me.
And so I did. That was back in January 2007. I made (for once) a new year’s resolution that I was going to abide by. To be honest I couldn’t stand myself anymore, my half assed attempts of trying and not doing and I’m sure most of us could improve in some areas in their lives right now doing the same thing.
Being an entrepreneur does require a healthy portion of discipline. The really cool thing is that once we master this it really does become a lot easier. I’m happy to say that I go to bed on most days feeling a huge sense of accomplishment, knowing that I have done the best I could on that given day and looking forward to the next.
After all, I am human and do stuff up occasionally doing nothing too when in fact I should, but even then I see those days as well deserved days off. Keeping discipline is not easy, but it can be done. Discipline is also a must ingredient for success.
Once you master discipline don’t forget to add balance in healthy doses.
Make discipline happen for you
If you are one of the thousands of entrepreneurs who struggle with discipline allow me to give you some of my insights.
- Do it doucement (slowly, very slowly) (not sure whether this is a Bond movie line actually). We often fail when we try too hard. Take it one step at the time and incorporate necessary tasks week by week.
- Don’t measure yourself against others in competition. Use them as a guideline if all. You will only set yourself up for early failure when you try to compare what they have and you haven’t achieved.
- If you run a business besides working a day job, invest more emotional energy into your business. After all, it is your future and deserves your full attention.
- Don’t be put off by setbacks, keep persisting!
- Do something for your business every single day, regardless how tired you are.
- Use personal visualization techniques to day dream. They are very powerful.
- Don’t spend your time with negative people and business dream wreckers. They are poison, especially in the early (failure) stages of your business.
- Be proud of your achievements, however small they seem.
- Learn from your setbacks and mistakes and do it better next time round.
- Don’t try to complicate things - keep it easy.
- Have fun.
Discipline mustn’t be so hard
We are often our biggest negative influence when it comes to staying focused and disciplined. Negative self talk is like rape to your mind. Don’t do it.
I’d love to hear about your own trials and errors with discipline and what helped you to master it. Even better, what was the turning point in your life that prompted you to take your business serious?
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June 17th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Thank you so much for this post. I recently took a day job after eight years of solo. It’s a fine job with great folks, but I’m missing the passion and excitement of entrepreneuring again. Likely I’ll be back in the saddle sooner as a result of reading this.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:08 am
@ Gahlord: I thank you for showing me the power of inspiration through blog posts. I hope it will keep you going. It seems you are an entrepreneur at heart anyway.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Wonderful advice at the end of your post! Especially the part about putting your emotional energy into your own business. Too often I think we use so much of our energy at our day job that when it comes to our business there is nothing left to give. We have to be disciplined enough to fight this.
Setbacks are another thing. When we hit one, we normally take it as a sign of failure, when actually it is just an opportunity to take a new path to success. And a lot of times the new path is much better than the original!
June 18th, 2008 at 10:12 am
@ Tony: Too right about the emotional energy. It took me long enough to realize this myself. I guess much stems from the way we are brought up too. We are taught to work hard and not question our boss since he is the one putting bread on the table.
On the contrary, not many parents have the vision for entrepreneurial enterprises. I know mine didn’t. They still think I need to get a day job. I suppose it is the era in which they were born too. No Internet then and certainly no incentives to start your own business.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Very nice post. I think discipline is the biggest factor I’ve had to deal with when working online. Motivation and staying focused can be really difficult at times, especially with all the uncertainty that can come with businesses like internet marketing and MMO.
Thanks for the motivating post Monika
June 18th, 2008 at 10:16 am
@ Justin: Working online can be very lonely indeed. Sometimes it takes a double portion of discipline to keep on track. In the end, nothing is certain in life, except death. So we can only give our best and see what happens I guess.
In my eyes it is more important to nurse relationships online than with an offline business. Social networks, email, instant messaging and blogs are a great way to stay in touch with others in a most human way to keep the loneliness at bay.
Thank you too for commenting Justin.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:50 am
The post have lots of information and it shows how much the discipline is needed for an enterprises.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
“Do it doucement” is from the movie “True Lies”
June 18th, 2008 at 10:17 am
@ Rick: That’s it. Thank you so much for jotting my wary brain cells. I’m afraid I really suck with remembering movie lines or even story lines. Now that I know I realize I just saw the movie last week, that is why it stuck with me. LOL
June 17th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Great insight and I can relate to the frustration levels and depression that you experienced. While I’m not blogging full time (yet) I have those moments of great accomplishment followed by the days of staring at the screen.
One thing I am starting to do is set goals for myself. While I’m not talking about building 3 links a day, working on one new site a week, etc. (those are a different set of goals) I am starting a list and pictures of what I want to accomplish from my business. My wife and I want to work towards a pontoon boat for next year, so I have “our boat” picture above my desk on the wall to remind what I am working towards. Of course there are several other things too.
The other goals that I have I keep written down on a dry erase board above my desk so that when I start feeling scatter brained or just not focused, I can look up and see what I need to do (build links, add content, etc).
It is tough to get used to, especially with so many distractions, so I have also cleaned out my RSS feed except for the essential blogs, such as Court, Vic and Griz, plus a few others and that has helped. Limiting myself to checking my stats twice a day and my RSS feeds once a day has really allowed me to gain focus on what is essential for my business.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:23 am
@ Frank: Well done, you are on the right track. Keeping a visual “dream board” is a very powerful way to stay on track. I made one a couple of years ago and it is still with me today, changing as I evolve with my business.
I found that part of my problem was that I felt overwhelmed with all the stuff I was learning while feeling inadequate with what was expected of me, or more accurately what I expected of myself.
We often put far too much pressure onto us when we aim higher than we currently are at.
Shutting out distractions is great too. It helps a lot to stay focused like you are already doing.
June 17th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Excellent post Monica,
and thanks so much for sharing your story about making the break to become a business entrepreneur.
Great insights on discipline too.
I finally made the break to working fulltime on the net, when moving to another country and being unemployed forced me to make use of the skills I had.
Before that time, like you, I had been giving my all to helping other people achieve their dreams.
No if only I can stick to those discipline tips I will keep on doing just fine…
Great post!
June 18th, 2008 at 10:26 am
@ Zania: Thank you very much. It seems you basically jumped in the cold water and in fear of sinking you swam. Great way to get going for sure and well done for being so brave. It isn’t easy to migrate (I know all about that myself) and build a new life doing something totally different.
You will be fine since you have the strength to do whatever you out your mind onto, you already proved this by starting your business in a foreign country. Keep up the great work!
June 17th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I think in many cases people want to have a career online because they think it will be easy and will require short hours. If that’s the primary motivation I think discipline is always going to be difficult.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:27 am
@ Steven: You are correct there I think. Discipline is something many have to learn the hard way, but it is worth it for sure.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I too have trouble with discipline in most everything I do. I find if I just make smaller, more short term goals my larger goals eventually get accomplished.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:32 am
@ JR Smith: You know, that is what helped me too. I found by taking little steps, the bigger ones became a lot less frightening. Thank you for sharing this. I believe it helps others who feel the same way too.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
The biggest problem I had was the sense of panic that what I was doing wasn’t going to work - and I was contributing financially. Finally I went back to a low stress part-time job to take away the stress while I go thru the learning period of figuring out how to make money online.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:35 am
@ lissie: This is a valid alternative if you like the job. I happened to hate it, therefore I was suffering a lot emotionally. Unfortunately I did need it too to pay my bills and it made it all worse as I felt trapped.
Working a part time job while building a business is a smart idea, but like I said, you have to like the job or at least not dread going to work every day.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
If you could capture the moment when you feel motivated and energized — like when you get a burst of excitement as you discover a new idea or launch a new project — it would be easy to churn out a ton of work consistently.
Instead, the bulk of any work is usually done long after the phase of excitement is over. The secret is hiring mules to do the work while you play poker and dream up the next killer idea. That way, you never get sick of the grind work, because you’re not actually doing any of it.
June 18th, 2008 at 1:19 am
When working for yourself, especially working from home, it is very difficult to stay focused, and motivated. There are so many distractions, and people constantly interrupt. It’s as if they don’t take working from home seriously.
I had to finally “lay down the law” set rules, and then totally re-invent myself in order to stay focused on making progress. I also did what Niche Blogging did which was to clear the RSS feed to just 3 blogs, stopped visiting forums, unsubscribed from dozens of crap gurus email list.
It has helped quite a bit. I have been able to free up time to do the tasks that will lead to more income. It takes work but anyone with a little guidance, like this article here, can do it.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
@ Play Sonic Games: It seems that you and me and Niche Blogging (Frank) have done the same thing by doing what you just said. With me it actually started with just that. I unsubscribed from tons of auto responders, stopped following dozens of ways to make money, stopped checking my email ten times a day.
Doing all this was the catalyst really to get me onto the right track.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
This is a great article. I can’t even fathom dealing with this just yet. I currently work full time and spend all of the rest of my time working on my blogs and stuff. I multitask so rediculously at work it is not even funny, but I am used to it, because I have been a technician for many years now. One day when my blog takes off http://revenuereservoir.com I will come back to this article and use it for inspiration to quit working.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
@ Ben Moreno: Wow, finally a man who can multi task. And here I thought they didn’t exist. LOL
June 18th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Hello Monika,
when court and mark are talking about making money, you touch another aspect of it, staying disciplined and bring it to everybody’s attention.
High quality post. thanks.
June 18th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I would certainly agree! I am a WordPress Theme Designer and I try to discipline myself by trying to allot time to finish my design. That way, I can be more productive.. but it is indeed hard. Although motivation is a big key to achieve this!
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
“Don’t spend your time with negative people”
MMMmmmm…. would that not include Vic?
This is a serious question; not trying to be a smart aleck. There are so many occasions here that the triumvirate of Court, Vic, Grizz is mentioned, and I really feel a lot of negativity often on Vic’s site.
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:04 am
I think entrepreneurs struggle with discipline because they keep receiving different ideas to explore. The challenge is how to focus the ideas. I come down to my office with a schedule of things to do and I get off that list so fast. Way too many random thoughts.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:23 am
[…] Why Do Entrepreneurs Struggle With Discipline? by Monika Mundell […]
August 5th, 2008 at 5:28 am
[…] Discipline isn’t just about working hard, but you do have to do that. Discipline is also about managing your entrepreneurial tendencies. Many natural born entrepreneurs are blessed with a mind that is an idea-generating machine. The good news is that some of those ideas are gold mines. The bad news is that if you continually pursue new ideas, old ideas never get developed to fruition. And I’ve watched one multimillionaire in particular run his business into bankruptcy because every week he was working on something new. […]
August 12th, 2008 at 4:48 am
[…] Discipline isn’t just about working hard, but you do have to do that. Discipline is also about managing your entrepreneurial tendencies. Many natural born entrepreneurs are blessed with a mind that is an idea-generating machine. The good news is that some of those ideas are gold mines. The bad news is that if you continually pursue new ideas, old ideas never get developed to fruition. And I’ve watched one multimillionaire in particular run his business into bankruptcy because every week he was working on something new. […]