Staying Sharp
When I first started working for myself, the most common question people would ask me was something along the lines of “how do you stay motivated?”. If put in my position, it seemed that most people expected they would be lounging in PJ’s until noon. In their minds, once you remove yourself from a position of being managed to becoming your own boss, there’s no reason to work hard. I mean, there aren’t consequences for under-performing without a manager or performance review waiting for you, right?
This couldn’t be further from the truth. That is, for me it’s quite the opposite of reality, and I imagine the same is true for anyone who expects to be working for themselves for more than say, five minutes. But I can understand where the expectation is coming from. The real question, I think, is “how do you stay sharp without someone else managing and shaping your career”? If you are your own boss, who pushes you to become better and better? The answer is, well, you!
From where I’m sitting there are two basic motivations for those of us who are self-managed. First, the consequences of failure actually become greater when you begin working for yourself. In a traditional job you work hard, you hope someone notices, if you’re doing well you move up. That’s the expected path. If you screw up or get lazy, well then maybe you don’t get a promotion this time around, or someone scolds you in a performance review. But there’s always someone there to pick up the slack. Your manager is the one who’s ultimately responsible for your team’s performance and no one can hold you individually accountable for the successes or failures of the company.
When working for yourself, the failure falls to you, and you alone. That pressure in itself becomes a major motivator. Particularly, if you are the type of person who has pride in your work ethic and reputation, which is true for many self-managed people. If you don’t set the example, push yourself, do your best work, your team will fail. That’s a near certainty. For me, I just couldn’t let that happen. Not after risking so much and coming so far. I’d say the majority of start up founders are probably workaholics for exactly that reason (although I don’t condone overworking, but that’s another topic). If you get lazy, you’re only letting yourself down. You’re risking your own job and lively hood. If you’re bootstrapped (like my company), you’re throwing away all the equity you worked to build. But mostly, there’s just that fear of being seen as a failure. Without anyone else to blame, your company’s failure becomes very obviously yours. And everyone would see that.
The second motivational component comes not from fear, but from passion. A lot of people end up in a self-managed position as a direct result of pursuing their passions. That’s true for me. So I have this deep protective instinct toward my job. I want to preserve the ability to be my own boss, and do what I love every single day. I want it to last. I want to keep loving my job for years to come. That’s what motivates me to stay sharp. I never want to stop getting better, because I never want to wake up and have the fun job carpet suddenly pulled out from under me. You can’t achieve greatness by lounging in your PJ’s and hardly working. That just isn’t going to happen. For me, that desire to preserve the job I love is motivation in itself.
Certainly there are other factors at play like competitiveness and financial security, etc. I don’t mean to say those are the only two motivations. And what’s really fascinating to me now, is thinking about how much more the larger, more traditional companies might achieve if even half of their workforce approached their jobs the way self-managed entrepreneurs do. We all need to stay sharp and keep pushing forward, but the results are so much more powerful when that push comes from within.
