Are you an entrepreneur or looking to follow that path? Being an entrepreneur is a great venture that is not as challenging as many people think. In addition to the professional skills needed in this area, your personality determines your success too. Just like in any other field, there are good habits that help you succeed, but at the same time, there are bad habits you must eliminate. To assist you in becoming a successful entrepreneur, here are 6 bad habits you must cut out immediately.
1. Overworking Without Free Time/ Work Hard, Play Less
As an entrepreneur, you are vulnerable to overworking as you try to meet the set goals. If you have employees, you might overwork them as well. You must avoid this habit to enhance productivity in your business. In most cases, if you work too much, your work days will become a drag leaving you overwhelmed and fatigued. In this case, it means that when certain important or emergency situations arise, you may have trouble handling them due to your lack of energy.
To avoid overworking yourself or your employees, you need to develop the habit of setting a schedule with ample free time. Set up realistic schedules with only tasks that can be accomplished within a given time. You should also not be too rigid to your schedule and always listen to your body.
2. Being a Perfectionist
You might aim to be a perfectionist because you think this is what will make you stand out from the others. Aiming for perfectionism can be extremely time-consuming. As you chase the idea of making a certain task perfect, you realize there are a lot of other things that require perfection too. In the long run, you will end up wasting valuable time and cause delays.
Instead of fighting so hard to demonstrate perfectionism, start off by aiming to have a certain task done at 85 percent. If 100 percent is realistic, go for it. It is worth noting that mistakes act as learning opportunities and will allow you to make the right improvement.
3. Negative Mind-Set
It is easy for your mind to be filled with negativity, especially if you fail to attain some of your objectives. If you look at any failure with negativity and allow it to stick in your mind, you are bound to fail in other tasks too. All you need is a positive mindset so that you can improve and overcome all the challenges you face in your journey. If you fail at something, do not waste time dwelling on it, simply move on and try again or even change your strategy. Remember that there is no success without failure and you only truly fail if you quit. “1 percent doubt and you’re out!“
4. Procrastination
Procrastination is a terrible habit in which you continuously postpone a task, convincing yourself that you will get to it later. It mostly occurs when you have a challenging task, taking long breaks, failure to move on among others. This is a behavior that will make you susceptible to failure as an entrepreneur. One thing you need to note is that there are always important things to get done and tomorrow is not guaranteed.
To avoid this habit, you need to set priorities; urgent and important tasks should always come first. In addition to this, be sure to motivate yourself, reward yourself and keep yourself accountable for everything you must do.
5. Making Excuses
This is one of the most common faults among entrepreneurs. When you fail to accomplish certain tasks, you must stop making excuses as to why you didn’t. As an entrepreneur, you should never have time for excuses. In addition, do not accept such excuses from your employees or other stakeholders involved in your business. NO EXCUSES!
6. Failure to Reward Yourself
As an entrepreneur, you might reward your employees, customers and all others, but often forget about yourself. Failure to reward yourself can leave you feeling a great lack of motivation and inspiration. Rewarding yourself is one of the greatest ways to boost your productivity. You can do this when you accomplish some challenging tasks or when you attain some of your set goals. It is not necessarily money that you should reward yourself with, but enjoy some free time to yourself, enjoy the holidays with your family, spending time with your children; do anything that makes you feel alive.
In conclusion…
These are just some bad habits you must avoid in order to be a successful entrepreneur. Eliminating the bad habits helps you grab and take advantage of all the opportunities available leading to great success. Take some time to sit down and figure out how you will cut out your bad habits according to your own situation and needs. It will certainly pay off!