Pulled any all-nighters lately? The name of the game is hustle, hustle, hustle, right? Sleep is for the weak!

It’s not uncommon for forum jockeys and blowhards to brag about this kind of never-say-die work ethic, and it’s not uncommon to think that is the way we all should be working – that is, on the grind 24-7.

And it’s not that hard to do, when your business is new and shiny and full of possibilities. You’re excited and it’s natural to want to immerse yourself and absorb as much as possible as quickly as you can. That’s how I tackle new projects or interests, in fact – I totally bury myself in the topic for days or weeks, almost ignoring everything else, until I’ve mastered it. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But there is something wrong with still being on that grind 6 months, a year, or 5 years later. Why become your own boss if only to work yourself to death?

That kind of work just isn’t sustainable. There’s the stress induced heart attack you’re setting yourself up for, the low sex drive and weight gain from lack of sleep, and the quality of your relationships with your family and friends will suffer until you’re all alone and the neighborhood kids nickname you “Mr. Burns.” …But it’s easy to ignore potential health threats that *might* come in the distant future – that’s why smokers keep smoking.

The more insidious effect of of this kind of “overtime worship” among the entrepreneurial crowd is fooling yourself into thinking you’re accomplishing something by simply putting in long hours. Hours alone don’t make a profit.

The ugly underbelly? If you’re working at something 12 hours a day for months on end and you either (a) aren’t done yet or (b) haven’t made a substantial profit yet then you’re doing it wrong.

Let me say it again – long hours and caffeine fueled nights are more often symptoms of failure than they are of success.

Short bouts of intense work preparing for a big event, like a new product release or a site redesign? That’s cool and it’s not what I have a beef with. The danger lies in be false belief that you’re not seeing success because you’re not working hard enough, with the inverse being that you would see success if only you put in more hours.

But more hours isn’t enough, they’ve got to be the right kind of hours. In other words:

What’s painful is laboring over the same inefficient, or worse, ineffective means of growing a businesses for months and years, thinking the work is “hustling” when it’s more like digital fappery… and just as draining (ha!).

Working too hard is also a dangerous signal that you are your business. Without you and your daily input, the business will crumble. Not much of an business builder then, are you?

And it can be a sign that your external, outside of work life sucks. If you’re the boss and you’re choosing to spend all your time away from your non-business life, it could be a sign of escapism…

But most often, working too hard for too long is a sign that you just don’t know HOW to work less. You don’t know HOW to escape your business.

So that’s what my next post will be about: How To Work Less. Keep an eye out for it!

(Got your own questions for the show? Ask ‘em here!)

Prefer to listen to the episodes? Click above and subscribe in iTunes.

The post Why You Need To Work Less appeared first on Michelle MacPhearson.