How to be passionate about your business without being obsessed

In its essence, entrepreneurship is all about passion, dedication, and commitment. The best entrepreneurs are people who have made sacrifices and dedicated their lives to building the foundation for a successful business.

It isn’t just about work for those that strive to lift themselves to the summit of the world of business and beyond. There are those who would compromise on necessary life functions like food and sleep to make sure that there isn’t a hair out of place or a toe out of line.

Image : shutterstock

This is what everyone will tell you about entrepreneurship, about the need to be obsessed in a very competitive market where you have to put it all on the line for results.

However, there is a very thin line between passion and obsession. When you wake up at some odd hour of the day and look into the mirror to see a haggard, work worn, embittered, and furious husk of a person staring back at you, then it really is time to take a step back and contemplate.

There are many characteristics of the obsessed entrepreneur. They often become irritable, distracted, and have too much information cluttered up without a streamlined outlet and too much stress pent up to lead a satisfying life.

One needs to question whether the creation of this obsessed alter-ego is absolutely necessary to the survival of your business. In most cases, it really isn’t.

That situation when you find yourself bombarded with files, e-mails and meetings doesn’t have to be a natural state in the entrepreneur ecosystem. The trick now is for you to try and avoid the path that leads to this state.

One of the most important ways to achieve this is through effective time management. There are priorities and then there are lesser ones. Time management involves identifying tasks which are time bound, and those that can be given a little leeway.

Management of tasks and delegation of responsibility will then give the entrepreneur time to breathe, but the proper structuring of your organisational functions isn’t the sole way to stop being obsessed. An entrepreneur also needs to look at how they spend their leisure time.

One needs the optimum combination of rest and relaxation to fully let go of the travails of work, albeit for a short period. There’s also a pressing need to interact with people outside of the worksphere since the latter would only bring up the business agenda inadvertently or otherwise.

Socialising is good, but the pursuit of personal hobbies is another important way to stop yourself from being too obsessed.

Your personal interests are also aspects of who you are as an individual, and though your work does define you to a certain extent, these are the things that you enjoy and love. The intellectual and spiritual growth achieved from good hobbies is immense, and that is also a huge part of who you are, not to mention the fact that they will help you unwind.

The bottom line is that an obsessed entrepreneur isn’t always a happy entrepreneur. There are many very visible consequences of being obsessed which could absolutely destroy you and those around you.

The first thing that usually goes haywire is your family life. When one becomes too obsessed, they tend to lash out at those closest to them, which leads to a broken situation at home. Health may be next, as the entrepreneur grinds it out into the wee hours of the morning on inadequate sustenance.

The ultimate and most devastating consequence though, is that all this turmoil could well cannonball into the downfall of the very empire you’ve fought so hard to build. Once the dust settles and the smoke clears, the passionate will succeed, but the obsessed may find themselves still grasping at straws.