Gretchen Rubin once penned the now often cited sentence:

The Days Are Long But The Years Are Short.

The last couple of weeks have been incredibly busy for me. I’m currently wearing three hats at work alone – not counting all the other stuff I do (two non-profits, a couple of board seats, a lot of mentoring, writing this dispatch, running… and most importantly spending time with my family). When I get home in the evening I am shattered. And still add another couple of hours of work before submitting myself to another fairly restless night.

The Days Are Long.

The scary piece of that experience – which by the way, for the most part, I truly love – is that I can’t comprehend that it’s nearly July already…

The Years Are Short.

Remember the story of the two lumberjacks? You have to stop from time to time to sharpen your axe. Even if you’re madly in love with what you do (as am I) you have to allow yourself to rest, appreciate the long way you have come, acknowledge the windy road ahead. slow down time to a halt and take a break.

I tend to write my Heretic dispatches the day I intend to post them. Often they are reflections of something I read, heard, saw or discussed earlier that day or the day before. Sometimes something got triggered and sends me on wild-goose chase of exploring a specific aspect of entrepreneurship.

And sometimes I just hit the wall.

I look at the blinking cursor of my text editor and nothing comes to mind. I wreck my brain for some useful, interesting and insightful nugget of wisdom. But nothing comes up. Those are the moments I doubt myself and my capabilities.

Today, whilst starring at my screen, I realized that this is a somewhat common problem for entrepreneurs. You hit the wall. You, for a moment, don’t know what brilliant thing you need to do next.

What you want to do in those moments is one of two things: Clear your head (and be okay with not knowing what’s next) or go heads down into some mundane but necessary task (and be okay with not doing something more “valuable”).

The moment will pass (it always does) and what seemed like a wall will soon be nothing more than a small obstacle which you can easily clear.

The Days Are Long But The Years Are Short.

What do you think? How do you plan your breaks? Let me know in the comment section below.

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