Finding And Keeping Your Entrepreneurial Balance – #flashtopic From The On The Shelf Podcast With Timothy Bush

In a world that seems to require so much more out of us, it can be very difficult to keep track of our life outside of the hustle we do at work. Balance is this elusive thing that everybody is trying to achieve. In this Flash Topic episode, host Timothy Bush brings back Joe Tarnowski, Tracy Hazzard, and Salah Khalaf to talk about finding the entrepreneurial balance. Sharing their own thoughts and ways for keeping that work-life balance or what Jeff Bezos calls the “work-life harmony,” Timothy and his guests shed light on the many aspects that many working people forget – from morning routines and doing self-reflection to taking vacations. They also offer some great things to think about to help us get through the daily grind happy and fulfilled.

Listen to the podcast here

Anybody has seen Bohemian Rhapsody? There’s that one scene when Freddie Mercury, he wasn’t even being called Freddie Mercury at the time. He just had joined the band. You could always see like the wheels are always turning in his head. He’s like, “What we need to do is record an album.” Everybody’s like, “Where are we going to get the money for that?” He’s like, “How much do you think we can get for your van?” In his mind for his passion, there’s nothing zero he wouldn’t sacrifice, including his band members.

I’m a little bit along the lines with what you’re saying, Joe. Taking the time to contemplate, journal it, visualize it, sketch it. I use a sketchbook all the time. Mostly it ends up words in there, but there are pictures all drawn in there, too. It’s mixed media. It’s always right next to me. It’s always there. I carry it with me everywhere and I’m always making notes. It’s not even about it. Sometimes I barely review it. It’s part of the contemplation process for me, almost meditative. It’s the writing part and doing all that, contemplating what would you love. I have an entire podcast company and business because I hated the whole production process.

Entrepreneurial Balance: It makes the world a difference when you get up in the morning and you can’t wait to get started on work because it doesn’t feel like work.

It was like, “I don’t want to do this. How do I get myself out of this?” As you contemplate the innovation of how you can do things and how you can stop doing things comes to you, that’s where you can move faster when you’re visualizing what you would love, you can visualize how you can get there. There’s this path, it starts to unveil itself right in front of you. Ideas come. People present themselves. You hear something that you pick up an article, you click on something that you wouldn’t have clicked on before because you’re have an active contemplation of that. For me, that’s been the key to everything we’ve done and how we’ve continually move forward is always taking that active contemplation role on everything that I want. It all narrows down into this, “What would I love? Sometimes what don’t I love? What do I want to get rid of where my problems are?” Focusing on that, to moving it to a place so that there isn’t anything in my day that I hate, that I dread. There isn’t anything about it. Folding kids’ laundry, that might be the one little thing. There are always those things in life.

Chaos doesn’t necessarily have to do with clutter, although clutter I think brings chaos. One of my big things is putting things on the back burner, procrastinating things. They build up and then they create chaos in my life or a crisis and crisis is chaos. I work well in crisis mode, but it doesn’t do good things for me.

Entrepreneurial Balance: You have to make whatever sacrifices you can so that you can do the things you love, and that will make you feel so much better day in and day out.

You’re so smart in that, Tim, because we talked on an episode a long time ago about some of our daily practices in business and everything. One of mine is to keep a clean inbox and it’s because of the clutter and the chaos, making my mind stressed. It’s not like I do everything that’s in my email or answer every email, but it’s not in the inbox. For me, that’s the way I removed that chaos from my life. I figured a way to flag it. I figured a way to attract it. I’m positive I’m not missing anything, but it’s not actively in my mind because it sits there everytime I open it.

Watch the episode here:

On The Shelf
Timothy Bush