The title of a post on Tom Peter’ blog caught my eye:
To Get Out of Bed. Or Not Get Out of Bed. That Is the Question.
This was one of the earliest business lessons I learned. When I was a university kid, I occasionally supplemented my two part-time jobs with odd jobs at $10/h with a local entrepreneur, doing low-level marketing tasks like passing out fliers. One day Mr. Entrepreneur calls up and says, “I’ve got a job for you, but I can only pay $8/h this time.” I told him I wasn’t interested. I could actually hear his smile on the other end of the phone.
“I see–you won’t get out of bed for less than $10/h, huh?”
That was it, in a nutshell. In that moment I understood BATNAs, BHAGs, and diminishing marginal returns in one intuitive leap. And I got a glimpse of what leadership is about.
The bottom line is asking yourself if what you do is REALLY worth getting out of bed for. What’s your time worth?
That’s a big part of leadership, and entrepreneurship is really just leadership taken to the extreme. Entrepreneurship comes from being driven to spend your time on important things.
That’s why time management for entrepreneurs is a little different from many jobniks. It’s not about seeing how many things you can cram into a day. It’s about deciding which things aren’t worth doing at all, and dropping them.
It’s about deciding what’s worth getting out of bed for, and what’s not.
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