And What You Need to do about it
This is my last day in Singapore and the days flew by so fast. I flew in last week to renew my Bali Visa to I can lengthen my stay there for a couple of months. Singapore is the shortest flight, and it’s reported to have a quick turnaround time for the visa, so I went here. I was craving for some urban vibes, and it delivered. My trip lasted for six days.
The first few days was figuring out how to move around the city, where to eat and where to work. I burned my mental capacity by deciding and researching mundane stuff. So by the time I sat down and worked, I was spent.
And yesterday was the only time where I got everything set. I had built my rituals, and I was operating on a lighter load. I was comfortable roaming around the metro with a bike, I had my regular breakfast place, and I set up shop in the National Public Library.
By the time I sat down to work, my mind was so fresh that I breezed through my list of things to accomplish. I munched on them like chocolate chips.
This is the one and only reason why our ventures are not moving forward — decision fatigue.
We take so much effort deciding mundane things — where to eat, where to work, or what to wear. This is why Morning and evening rituals are celebrated by world-class performers. It’s also the reason why Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg wears the same outfit to work.
There’s a place and time for novelty. The Artist’s Way of Julia Cameron requires people to take Artist Dates. This is the partner of Morning Pages that is not so popular. Artist Dates recommends you do something fun, novel and interesting. Take a new route to work, visit a quirky cafe, or collect pebbles in the nearby park.
But don’t live like this every day. Create rituals and don’t spend your precious mental RAM on mundane things.
Business and Entrepreneurship offers too much novelty that you can spend a whole lifetime finding new problems to solve. Solve the most significant problems first thing in the morning. As Brian Tracy is famously known for — Eat Your Frog. It’s the nastiest thing you can eat, but it’s the most important one to do. That will propel you forward into progress if you make a critical decision every day.
Make a decision even though you have an incomplete set of data. Even though the stars and moon don’t align. Even when it doesn’t make sense — just decide and make it work.
That’s how great businesses work, owners make a decision, and then they take a sprint. You either fail or succeed, but at least it didn’t take you forever.
Talk to you soon my friend.
The One and Only Reason Why Your Venture is not Moving Forward was originally published in The Ascent on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
