Entrepreneurs Are Lazy Workaholics

Entrepreneurs are lazy.

Entrepreneurs are also workaholics.

When I see a problem or inefficiency I must solve it. In part because of abhorring wasted effort and wasted time. Primarily because I see opportunity where others see only insurmountable challenges. When snowboarding or mountain biking I focus solely on the path and the destination. Quite literally the obstacles fuzz out into indistinct blobs surrounding the clearly obvious path to the, as clearly obvious, objective/destination way out there in front of us. It is sometimes hard to understand when most people don’t clearly see the obvious reward and destination on the clear path through overwhelming obstacles. Most entrepreneurs see the path that leads to the destination where others see the obstacles and challenges to avoid. That seems to be a pretty common trait amongst other entrepreneurs. It can often make it seem as if I am naive or blind to the challenges. I prefer to think of it as destination focused rather than obstacle focused. The keys to getting there are:

• Knowing where to go
• Knowing the path there
• Going there

  [Tweet “Avoiding obstacles is easy if you are lazy enough.”]

Why tackle obstacles when you can avoid them. I am an “if A then B then C…. Obviously Z!” leap of intuition guy. You don’t need to look before you leap if you know where you are landing. The height of the cliff doesn’t matter. Sticking the landing matters.

Being lazy means solving problems in innovative ways.

I value time and experiences over stuff and I am too lazy to do things badly. It is far more typical to spend 100 hours solving a big hairy problem that was causing me or others to waste time and effort than spend two hours filing unneeded TPS reports. (Even though it means I’m gonna need to come in on Saturday, yeah…..) Often my biggest ideas come from fixing something that was broken because it was seriously cutting into my playing around time. Obviously most entrepreneurs are also workaholics. That doesn’t have anything to do with being lazy. When I am in the zone solving big hairy problems it’s not work, it’s fun. Being completely unwilling to spend my precious time and energy on stupid stuff makes me smartly lazy. (At least I like to think of it that way) I despise doing stupid stuff. Doing stupid, needless stuff sucks your life away. I don’t think I’m alone in this, I’m just more lazy/motivated. Stupidly broken processes piss me off. I can not help but solve them. Solving problems is my passion. Striving to accomplish bigger than life goals is delightfully inspiring and remarkably fulfilling. I remain blissfully content working absurdly long hours to change the world for the better. And if it’s hard to do well and could deliver a big juicy reward then I’m all in, damn the torpedoes. To me being an entrepreneur has absolutely nothing to do with “working for yourself” it is simply seeing opportunities where most see problems. As any entrepreneur or business owner will tell you, if you own a business you certainly don’t work for yourself. You work for your employees, customers, vendors the business and most of all your vision. Being an entrepreneurial person means I have almost no choice; I absolutely, positively MUST solve that big huge problem because the opportunity is so great. I have never wanted to start a business or be my own boss, I literally could not NOT solve the problem. And if you are wondering IF you are an entrepreneur read this and know that most are not. . As Amazon’s Jeff Bezos said “Entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.” But I am deeply lazy. I am an entrepreneur. If those TPS reports can be done better I will spare no effort to re-engineer, remake and revolutionize the reason why we do them, the way we do them and the whole customer flow.