Getting tired and run down? Decision-making evil lurks around the corner if you don’t change course.
Its 11:30pm on a Wednesday and your next decision may mean success or failure for your new startup business. Will you write & respond to email, write some more code, develop that new Facebook ad campaign–or will you go to sleep?
I like to say that startups are both a marathon and a sprint. Am I crazy, bipolar or just cant make up my mind? It turns out that you have to operate at different times with both mentalities. In other words, sometimes you sprint and sometimes you run the marathon.
The one thing I do know is, you can’t sprint for too long a period before burning out and your decision-making abilities begin to tip over to creating more bad decisions than good decisions. A few weeks ago, I wrote about 7 daily productive habits that I employ to stay balanced.
The notion that I encourage you to deploy is more tempo over speed. Tempo is more of the pace that you will operate at vs. speed, which is going as fast as you can.
And decision-making is the key to good tempo. What I observe is that as the business gains speed and chaos lives right around the corner, decision-making begins to slow. Our brains just cant process all of the data that comes with an organization that is now 2-3x larger than the one you started with.
Personal and subsequently company pacing is the key to managing your growing business. How are you going to be your best when decisions need to be made?
First step is to identify what is your pace where you are at your best for most of every day? Do you need 4, 7 or 8 hours of sleep per night? Do you need a break in the middle of the day to decompress and start over? A workout, meditation or just a healthy walk might do the trick. Are you putting too many meetings back to back and creating havoc in your brain? Fix your calendar.
Steve Blank’s defines tempo as – the ability to make quick decisions consistently over extended periods of time. Decision-making marathons–are you ready?