Lately, I have been working pretty hard on an Android application for a new contact management system (finally!!) and have been just doing that after work and on the weekends. It has been time consuming because I had to read a book and learn the platform (which I do not mind because I am a software developer and love coding), and has practically been the only thing I have done in the past few weeks. This is fine and actually recommendable when comes to building a product, business, or service, but can cause havoc to your emotional and entrepreneurial health. Why can it be dangerous to your emotional and entrepreneurial health?
In a word – failure. If what you are working on fails to get to where you expect to, or just doesn't go anywhere, you will take an emotional and entrepreneurial hit that may put you out of commission. The journey to achieve financial freedom is a harsh and hard road one has to travel that has hurdles, bumps, and maybe some discomfort. Because of this inherent risk, I believe people should diversify their happiness or life portfolio to hedge against and minimize the risk of failure in one area of life. Tim Ferris discusses this in part in a blog with 37Signals.
We should be involved in multiple things in life outside of business. Tim recommends having a physical activity to balance your life like going to the gym and setting exercise goals. This way if one of your weeks is bad on the business side, but you've reached a milestone in the gym, you will not feel entirely bad and may actually not even get upset at all. I think this advise is solid and should be obeyed like a commandment. The activity outside business could be dance classes, learning a new language, taking a class cooking, sculpting, teaching your children, volunteer work, etc; just something else where you can achieve, or help someone; this will feed your ego.
Life is hard and the road paved for entrepreneurs is tough, so be smart about your pursuits and try to strike a balance. This will help you make it through the hard times and overcome the setbacks. Stay positive, keep positive people around you, and soldier on in the battle for independence!
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