Maintaining a healthy work-life balance can be difficult in today’s culture that celebrates being always on. In fact, 94 percent of 1,000 professionals surveyed by the Harvard Business Review said they put in 50 or more hours a week at work. What’s more, nearly half that group clocked in more than 65 hours a week.
Sorting through types of entrepreneurs is not something human resources get to do. Entrepreneurs, especially founders, often are the first employee. They set the tone and the future company culture. In effect, types of entrepreneurs translate into types of companies.
At the same time, hiring based on personality type is a big deal nowadays. More and more human resources managers include some sort of personality testing into hiring. Why? Because more and more organizations want to make sure they onboard the right candidate. Personality testing seems to be a safe way to ensure employees will fit in.
Yet, oftentimes the same results don’t apply to types of entrepreneurs. In fact, it appears that entrepreneurs that “make it” constantly change the paradigm for which personality type does what. Hence, let’s cover personality types for a bit, and then go into types of entrepreneurs.
These days everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and launch a startup. It’s cool to be your own boss, wear the same clothes to work every day, have a ping-pong table in the fun room, and brainstorm with your team over pizza at 3 in the morning.
Still, there is a huge gap between the way people picture the startup life and the actual reality. In fact, the gap is so big, you can easily call it a chasm. Multiple factors have created it and continue to widen it every day:
The media that glorifies highly successful founders, yet says little about the rest of them, which in fact represents the majority
The pot full of gold that people dream of finding at the end of the rainbow, i.e. a startup turned unicorn
Blockbusters that make you want it even more
Let’s take all these urban legends out of the way, even if it’s just for a second. The picture is not so bright anymore, right?
Most entrepreneurs are quick to experience fatigue. It’s only natural. There are simply so many decisions to make. Anything can go wrong, anytime. And some days are plain awful. Some days you might want to shut everything down. And move somewhere and fish for a living. Or fix fishing nets.
It is the work. Being an entrepreneur is a lot of work. And everything about that work is special. You deal with countless items every day. Product, strategy, development, marketing. New markets, optimizing. Or too much optimizing.
Productivity hacks are not a cheat. Instead, think of them as an enhancement to your productivity. A regular working experience has certain limitations. Entrepreneurship does not.
Productivity is a key issue for entrepreneurs. It has grown as an issue along with the number of startups. And the knowledge base on productivity is growing. Along with it, so is confusion. There are claims that the 6-hour workday is optimal. Others put in 60 hours of work every week and go on city breaks in weekends.
The world is crazy for enhancing productivity. Why? Maybe it’s because we’re so far from where we started. And we cannot reconcile our current success. Or maybe it is standard greed. We want more. And when you want more, you know what to do. Increase productivity. Or maybe we’re scared that in the future 80% of jobs will be lost to AI. It’s still productivity that we’ll be concerned with then.
Productivity and being productive. It’s a modern issue. Ideas come and go. They’re a dime a dozen. Having the idea is only 1 percent of the issue. Putting the work in, that’s an entirely different matter. Getting your team to be maximally productive, even more so. It’s tougher than ever to get everything done
Every manager and entrepreneur dreams of becoming an inspiring leader that people would gladly follow. Some people have a natural leadership instinct, but what if you weren’t born with such exceptional skills? Can you learn how to be inspiring to others?
Science says there are ways you can train yourself so that people listen to you and follow your lead. Here’s what I found to be useful for anyone willing to go on this journey of inspiring leadership.
Judging by the enormous amount of books and blog posts on the topic of productivity, you can easily realize just how hard it is for anyone to actually reach this goal of ultimate productivity. Managers, C-level executives, and entrepreneurs are facing an even bigger challenge because they are usually involved in many projects, have a lot of responsibilities, and the pressure to succeed is incredibly high. Being productive is even more compelling.
That’s why I decided to put up a list of what I found to be the productivity hacks that are both highly effective and easy to implement in no time.