We have all known someone in our lives who has been perfectly successful without being a worker for all that. This is the person who has always done just the right thing and who has achieved the feat of spending his entire schooling with marks floating a few tenths above the average. Every year everyone thought “this time it’s over, he only had 10 last year, he won’t be able to do it again this year”. And yet, every year he adapted to the difficulty without overdoing it…
For lazy entrepreneurs the situation is different, and the difficulty is much greater. However, there are some keys that make it possible to grow your business while remaining lazy.
Lazy people are often remarkably resourceful. When you give them a task, they always find the easiest and least tiring way to do it. This pushes them to think more, to use their minds to find the best way to do the task. Their logic for success is not to work harder, but simply to work smarter. Being lazy is not related to a lack of ambition. You can very well start your business but remain true to your nature on this point. Here are some keys to keep your business afloat when you are lazy.
Choosing the best time to work
Knowing that you’re already struggling to get to work if you choose the wrong time to “make the effort” you’re heading for disaster. There’s no point in tackling a hot issue early in the morning when you don’t have the energy or staying up late at night.
If your goal is to be as productive as possible to accomplish the most tasks in the least amount of time, choose the late morning to work on the most demanding files. This is the best time for reflection and concentration. For the other important tasks you have to do, prefer the late afternoon, around 4:00 p.m., when you often have a peak of attention.
All tasks that are repetitive or do not require concentration can be done at other times of the day.
Take advantage of “downtime
Using all the idle time present in your schedule can allow you to move forward and therefore have less work for later. These moments are many (traffic jams, waiting at the doctor’s, for an appointment…) and you rarely have anything else more enjoyable to do, so this is an ideal opportunity to move forward.
By doing this, you increase the times when you can really take it easy and enjoy other activities. The small tasks you can do during these periods are many: updating your agenda, reading reports, files…
Cultivate your network
If you are lazy, your network is indispensable. You need to build the widest possible network of people you can really count on. The larger this group of “close acquaintances” will be, the easier it will be for you to find people to help you when you need it (or when you haven’t found the strength to work on time and are right on schedule). The point is simply not to ask too many of the same people, which should not be the case if you have a large enough group. There is no point in betting on quantity by adding everyone on Facebook or LinkedIn, know these people well enough.
To be successful while remaining lazy, be cunning and use unglamorous schemes. To get help from other entrepreneurs in your “group”, your business also needs to help them; the exchange has to go both ways. Often it is possible to do this effortlessly. If you have a media site, it can be by relaying some of their news, advising them the names of good companies you work with…
Learning to delegate
Be a master in the art of delegation, it’s all about finding employees you can trust and assigning the right person for each task. Every good manager knows this. In return, you lose and give up some control you used to have over the task. It takes time, but if you’re effective, you’ll eventually have more time to think about the company’s strategy, or…. to take a nap.
Focus on the top 20% of the most important tasks
As a lazy entrepreneur, if you don’t focus on the most important tasks, your chances of success are almost nil. Pareto’s law tells us that 20% of the tasks are enough to achieve 80% of the results, or that 80% of the effects are the product of 20% of the causes, a godsend for you! You must therefore identify these 20% most important tasks and focus on them. To do this, make a list of all the tasks you perform and note those that seem unnecessary. You can quickly move on to the remaining 80% or drop some of them.
Be careful, however, if you don’t want to force your nature and remain lazy, you must show great self-confidence and infallible serenity. Under these conditions, you will inevitably have to work in a hurry, within very short deadlines. The tactic may pay off, but you may not be sure that you are putting all the chances on your side by doing so…
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