Being a Startup Owner, Hard Work is My Favourite Timepass

“Smart work over hard work is necessary to achieve the desired objectives in today’s fast-paced world”, I still remember this teaching from my Accounting Teacher, back in school.

He would repeat this line so many times, that it got engraved in my memory. I started focusing on smart work and realised its immense importance in enhancing productivity.

No one has ever topped a university or become a successful entrepreneur by slogging off for 18 hours straight in a day. 6-8 hours of sleep is necessary to maintain good health and stay focused on work. Also, smart work promotes delegation of work and avoidance of mundane tasks to become efficient.

However, in the process of adapting to smart work, I forgot the importance of working hard until startup culture hit me.

While most people rely on “overnight success” to succeed in real life, nothing of that sort exists in the startup world. There’s no substitute for hard work or a shortcut to succeed in entrepreneurship.

All entrepreneurs work for 15-16 hours a day, from Mondays to Sundays. However, it doesn’t mean they are working their ass off for 2/3 of total hours in a day.

These hours include time spent in thinking and searching for ideas to grow a business, because they can come anytime – while taking a shower, walking with a friend or even talking with a girlfriend at a coffee shop.

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Apart from generating ideas for growing business, a startup owner handles several responsibilities simultaneously – client management, finance, operations, recruitment etc.

These all tasks are tedious, repetitive and require long hours of dedicated management. Plus, initially due to budget constraint, the startup owners can’t even outsource these tasks or delegate to their team.

Starting a business is not an easy, simple task. Continuing and expanding it is much more difficult.

Often, the success of a startup is linked to the passion of its owner. However, passion is too overrated. Startups and businesses thrive because the owners and founders commit every working hour of every single day in growing the business.

Even if it comes at the expense of their health, family, relationships, but they do the hard work, because it’s worth it.

Entrepreneurs and startup owners also want peace and an optimum work-life balance. However, it is easier said than done.

They spend countless hours and sleepless nights to work towards an idea or expansion of business because every second spent towards it takes them closer to success.

Startup is not easy – at least not like how it is shown in movies or multi-billionaire books.

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