I’ve been thinking a lot about fatigue this week. Let’s start with muscle fatigue – defined as a progressive decline in performance from repeated, intense use of muscles. A college physiology lab made this an indelible lesson for me. If you stimulate a nerve in a frog’s leg with an electric probe, the leg will twitch, due to the release of special substances (neuromuscular transmitters) from the nerve. If you continue to stimulate the nerve, however, the twitching slows, and eventually stops altogether, as all the neuromuscular transmitters have been used up.
The good news is that muscles largely recover after a period of rest, once the body has a chance to make more of the neuromuscular transmitters. But, until then, the over-stimulated muscle is essentially paralyzed.
Do you see how this mimics a common entrepreneur problem? When you consistently forego sleep to work just a little longer, eventually you reach a state of fatigue and paralysis. In fact, one study showed that people who worked 50 hours/week for 7 weeks were no more productive than people who worked 40 hour weeks for the same 7 weeks. There was an increase in productivity at first, but it quickly tapered off as fatigue set-in. Read Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity if you want to see more productivity comparisons.
It may be great to be your own boss, but you can push yourself so hard that you are also your worst enemy. What’s the solution? Number one is recognizing the problem, and setting a ‘stop’ time for work. Number two is developing the systems that allow you to automate, delegate, & outsource much of your work. That’s how I can help you, as explained here:
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