Letting off the throttle

Last quarter my business revenue increased 52%. That’s awesome!

When I was planning out this quarter I wanted to increase revenue by 14% over last quarter (about 74% over Q1). Ambitious but doable — especially considering the growth I had last quarter!

But I failed to factor in the human element. For the previous 3 months I was, for the most part, 100% in the zone the entire time. I put in place new systems and policies that had a tremendous effect on what I was able to build and ship.

So I thought — it worked then, why not now?

But what I failed to adequately estimate was how a drastic change in environment and routine can effect your “deep work” time.

I really underestimated how much of an effect it would make.

A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I packed up our apartment, put our cats in the car, and we all headed out west to travel the USA for a few months and live out of Airbnb’s.

I’ve followed various digital nomads over the years and figured, since we’ve got the flexibility in our businesses, why not give it a shot? See how things go. See if that full-time travel life is one that works for me.

We’re still early into it but we’ve both been home sick. I’ve struggled to get much work done without my carefully curated office.

And that brings me to the point of this post.

Sometimes you’ve got to let off the throttle.

You can keep trying to go full throttle but if you’re not getting the results you were and you keep putting in more and more effort and getting less and less results, you’re going to get frustrated with your work. You’re going to end up resenting it.

At least that’s true for me.

And, despite telling myself this for years, I haven’t listened to my own advice. I hope by writing this out it will be easier for me to actually put it into practice and remember it when it’s needed.

There’s no problem letting off the throttle.

There’s no problem applying the brakes.

Slow things down so you can successfully navigate the turns.

It’s better to take the turns a bit slower than go off the road.

Use an appropriate speed for the turn and, when you hit the apex of the turn, jam the accelerator to the ground.