Stop doing business tasks you hate
I hate making logos.
There was a point where I would dread every time a new logo project came in.
Logo design has never clicked with me the way that web design does. Every minute working on a logo was a struggle.
It would easily take me three times longer to create a logo compared to a dedicated logo designer.
But I still did logos for years.
As much as I hate logos, they paid the bills and I didn’t realize I could just say no.
It took me a long time to learn the lesson:
Stop doing work you hate to do.
We sabotage our businesses by doing tasks we detest which can easily be automated, outsourced or eliminated from our lives.
We started our own businesses because we wanted total control over our work.
We want more time, more money and more joy.
We didn’t make the risky decision to run our own businesses to be miserable, right?
At any point we can fold up shop and get an employer. We’d still be doing things we don’t like, but at least then we’d get a steady paycheck and group health insurance.
The whole point of running our own businesses is to enjoy doing it, if we’re not, then what are we doing?
We have total control. If there are tasks in our business that we don’t enjoy we need to figure out a way to get rid of them.
It’s completely our fault if we’re doing things we don’t enjoy in our business.
I totally get it, I may not seem easy to get rid of some of those less-enjoyable tasks, especially if you’re billing for them.
It used to be hard for me to turn down logo projects knowing that I was turning away paid work.
But now I know that even though I’m turning away money in the short term, I can spend the time that I would have spent on logos working on my business, or on paid work I enjoy.
How do you know if you can get rid of that task you hate?
- Is the task essential to one of your long-term goals? If not, then stop doing it. If yes, then read on…
- Is it a task that you can pay somebody to do for significantly less that your hourly rate? If so, then outsource it.
- Are you terrible at it? – Then stop doing it, it’ll take you 3x as long to do it compared to somebody that loves it
Have you ever eliminated a task that you hate in your business?