Seasoned businessmen and women will tell you that breaking out on their own to form their very own business is probably the largest challenge they have ever encountered. Doing so without stress is very nearly impossible. Suddenly no one is telling you what to do; you are the one telling others. You do not follow the schedule that someone else devised; you make the schedule for everyone else. And as fulfilling and rewarding as owning your own business can be, the risks and stress are on an equal but opposite scale. But getting that business headed in the right direction can be made a little less stressful by things like prioritization. What’s important? That gets done first. What isn’t? That gets put off. Is there a project that is time sensitive? Set yourself a schedule and stick to it. Don’t expect your employees to prioritize if you don’t.
And don’t stretch yourself so thin that there’s nothing left. Many people will be clamoring for your attention and putting demands on you such as never before. If you can maintain a calm, organized outlook, you will be the one that not only keeps your head but keeps it above water. Drowning in a sea of debt in secondary to drowning in stress. Learn how to say no, that word alone can be your new best friend. Learn how to say it with discretion, but learn how to say it and use it. And don’t stress out over all those yellow ‘while you were out’ messages on your desk. Prioritize those in the same manner in which you have prioritized your projects.
Never forget that guy that used to scream at you to get your work done and antagonized all the other employees around you. He did it because he was stressed out. Don’t be that guy. Learn how to handle your stress so that not only you but your business and your employees can run like a fine tuned machine with as little stress as humanly possible in the workplace.
