It's a day when everything in your business seems hard. No matter what you attempt, you're slogging through it.
You don't feel motivation, you don't feel pep, you don't feel any magic in the entrepreneurial journey today. It just feels like work.
Maybe even hard work, at that.
It is, in other words, one of those days that you're not supposed to have once you launch the entrepreneurial venture of your dreams…
You know, the one where you're “doing what you love so that you never have to work another day in your life.”
Or the one where you're outsourcing everything so that you have the infamous four-hour work week or 30-minute work day.
And yet.
You've launched the entrepreneurial venture, but still you find yourself having one of those days.
I know what you might want me to tell you.
You might want me to tell you that there's a lifehack for that.
That if you follow the seven steps in this week's list article, you can overcome any lack of motivation and be filled with vim and vigor in no time flat.
You might want me to tell you that there's an app for that.
That if you download the iFixU app for $0.99 and set it to the “Pick Me Up” function, it will pop up inspirational messages in colors psychologically proven to trick your brain into believing it wants to be working hard even when you really don't.
You might want me to tell you that if you get rich or famous enough, it never happens.
That once you reach [insert your goal here] levels of money or fame, lack of motivation or the feeling of slogging through stops happening. That at some point, it becomes permanently “easy.” That you can outsource all of the internal struggle to a low paid VA and cross it off a list, like it's an email to be sent.
You might want me to tell you that if you pick the right “passion,” it magically disappears.
That if things feel really hard or you really don't want to do the work that's on your plate this week, it means you just haven't found your “calling” yet, and once you DO find your “destiny,” you'll never again have to do anything that doesn't feel like ecstatic play.
The unglamorous truth is that sometimes, you just have to DO THE WORK.
You have to stop surfing productivity articles looking for the one that has the “right” hack that will make your problem vanish. You just have to do the work.
You have to stop futzing with your to-do lists, your calendars, your reminder apps, your productivity apps, your motivational soundwave mp3 playlist, your chair that just isn't adjusted quite right because if it was adjusted just right THEN you'd be able to work — no. You just have to do the work.
You have to stop longing for the fame and fortune that will take you away from the pain of ever having to slog through work again. Oprah Winfrey has been known to work really long hours and to be really stressed out when she's crunching on a project. If she's not rich and famous enough to avoid the slog, who is? You have to do what she does: just do the work.
You have to stop jumping from one “passion” to the next because you believe that the “right” one will magically alleviate all the difficulty, lack of motivation, slogging, or rough patches from your life. It won't. Even when you've found your soul's deepest calling, there are some days when you're just doing to have to buckle down and do the work.
There's striving for a business that is as effective, efficient, and aligned with what makes your soul sing as possible. And then there's just not wanting to do the work.
They are not the same thing.
But sometimes entrepreneurs, enchanted by the sales pitches of the borderline ethical (or well-meaning but genuinely clueless) among us who promise All Play With No Work businesses, simply forget.
Forget that there is no such thing as a four-hour work week — not even for the guy who wrote the book by the same title (who'd be the first to tell you that there is no such thing as a four-hour work week).
Forget that there is no such thing as a passion-based business that never hits a rough patch.
Forget that, unglamorous though it may be, sometimes the only answer is: Do the work.
And you do the work because tomorrow brings with it a whole new day, which might feel a whole lot more like play than work.
That's the way it is for the entrepreneurs.
Sometimes you slog. You dig deep to push through when the going's tough.
Because the rewards are rich. In many senses of the word.
And when you've chosen the right path for your business, you get far more of the Good days than you do the Slog days.
But you're still gonna get some of the slog days.
And when you do, you do the work.
It's not magic. It's not glamorous. It's just real.
You just do the work.
(And breathe a happy sigh of relief when the next good day comes. Which it will.)
To doing the work,
