Entrepreneurship and mindfulness
In the book Siddhartha, the main character goes into business after spending years as a holy man.
He interviews with a merchant who asks him,
“What is it that you've learned, what you're able to do?"
Siddhartha replies,
“I can think. I can wait. I can fast.”
I’ve imagined that I could realize the one thing that would make my business a success if I just sat down in meditation long enough.
Lately, I’ve been spread thin by the business.
I’m trying to build a “company of one.” No employees. Passive income. Something that can be left alone, run on autopilot, and still continue to generate sustainable profit.
Because of that end goal, I’m resistant to hiring employees, taking funding, etc.
As a result, I’m resource-constrained. It’s just me, my time, and small investments from my savings that are the inputs into the business.
I’m the sales guy, marketer, web developer, accounting department, support team, etc.
I’ve found it increasingly difficult to prioritize tasks and focus. As the business grows, there are more things to do.
I have all these ideas in my head about what the business can do—e.g., new product ideas, new marketing strategies, new web designs.
When I actually start my work day, it’s hard to have a clear plan of action. I end up just working on whatever pops up—e.g., responding to emails and social media messages, getting on sales calls, putting out fires (the site crashed yesterday), working on whatever randomly pops into my head in the moment.
I’ve been journaling to get it all straight. This helps me to reset on what the ultimate goal is. And I can prioritize the tasks based on what has the biggest impact on the ultimate goal.
But I’ll write out a plan of action in my journal and sit down at my desk and then I still end up working on whatever pops up, making minimal progress on the high-level action plan.
Part of the difficulty is that things change quickly. Something happens in the day-to-day operations or I have a new idea that makes the previous plan irrelevant or outdated.
I suppose that’s unavoidable, necessary even. You need things to change. It gives you the data and feedback you need to make decisions. You find out what works and what doesn't.
Saying it like that makes it seem like it should be easy enough to get it all organized. It’s basically just the scientific method over and over: question, research, hypothesis, test, results, new hypothesis, test again … until you have your answer (or achieve the business objective).
But you can’t be too rigid. There needs to be some open space for creativity. Otherwise, how do you know what questions to ask?
There’s an art to building a business, especially in the early stages. You simply don’t know enough yet. You’re throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks, throwing paint on the canvas and seeing what people like.
And that's where I think the meditation comes in.
As an entrepreneur, you have a hundred different thoughts every hour. You can pick one of the thoughts and go through the scientific method, but how do you pick the thought?
You could just put every thought through the scientific method, but that’s not an option if you’re resource-constrained (which every entrepreneur is).
Meditation allows you to:
Create a space of quiet stillness where no new info is coming in.
Take inventory of all the thoughts you’re currently having.
Visualize each thought playing out if it were to be put into action.
Once you’re sitting down at your desk, you’ve got a lot of information on your screen, not to mention real-time notifications popping up.
With your eyes closed in meditation, you’ve got a blank screen. The only things that will show up on that screen are the thoughts already in your head.
This is when creative magic starts to happen. As an entrepreneur, your brain contains a lot of data about the business from customer conversations, market research, working on the product, etc.
It’s coded and organized in your mind differently than how it is on the computer, in Notion (or whatever software you use for knowledge management).
Ideas can connect, interrelate, combine, get in order.
To summarize, there are three ways to process information as an entrepreneur (in order from creative/chaotic to rigid/structured):
Meditate
Journal
Various softwares for knowledge management, data, visualization, etc.
A lot of entrepreneurs spend the most time doing 3.
1 and 2 are more creative.
It’s similar to Julia Cameron’s method of morning pages.
Artists do this. Write three pages in the morning, longhand, stream of consciousness. It’s a creative exercise to empty the contents of your mind.
Entrepreneurs should do this too.
Building a business requires a lot of thinking.
Not just more thinking, but better thinking.
Mindfulness can help.