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BUSINESS<br />
Management<br />
The joy of business:<br />
How to get more pleasure from your work<br />
With a quarter of business owners unhappy at work, DAVID BROWN provides<br />
advice on reducing stress, improving well-being and increasing productivity.<br />
The average is person estimated to<br />
spend almost around 90,000 hours<br />
– or 30 per cent – of their life engaged<br />
in paid employment.<br />
That’s a lot of time to spend on something<br />
that doesn’t provide pleasure and yet<br />
statistics show a significant proportion<br />
of employees and business owners don’t<br />
enjoy what they do.<br />
Data from Small Business Trends – an<br />
online hub for entrepreneurs, business<br />
owners and experts – shows that around<br />
25 per cent of business owners, or one in<br />
four, don’t love what they do.<br />
That’s a worrying statistic where<br />
performance is so closely related to<br />
enjoyment and motivation.<br />
Often the source of our unhappiness is<br />
related to our expectations of the job, as<br />
much as the job itself.<br />
If you are one of the unfortunate business<br />
owners who takes no joy in the job, there<br />
are several things that you can do that will<br />
make the experience more pleasurable<br />
and lead to greater satisfaction.<br />
• Learn to accept imperfections – We<br />
can be our own worst taskmasters at<br />
times and one of the biggest causes of<br />
frustration is to expect perfection from<br />
ourselves and from others.<br />
No matter how hard you try, things will<br />
never be done exactly the way you want<br />
them every single time – even when<br />
you’re doing the task yourself!<br />
• Roll with the punches – Leading on<br />
from the expectation of perfection is<br />
another lesson: when things go wrong,<br />
sometimes it pays to simply accept it.<br />
Many of us are familiar with the Serenity<br />
Prayer, which was first composed during<br />
the Great Depression. It reads, “Grant<br />
me the serenity to accept the things<br />
I cannot change, courage to change<br />
the things I can, and the wisdom to<br />
know the difference.”<br />
Too frequently, we focus on the things<br />
that go wrong in a day instead of taking<br />
Prioritise your wellbeing at work to achieve better results.<br />
the time to be grateful for the things that<br />
go right.<br />
• Keep things in perspective – Small<br />
problems, particularly when we are<br />
stressed, can be blown out of proportion<br />
in our minds.<br />
It’s all easy to lose perspective when a<br />
sudden ‘emergency’ appears, but most of<br />
today’s problems won’t exist in a week’s<br />
time – and won’t even be remembered<br />
three months later!<br />
When a ‘major disaster’ breaks out,<br />
ask yourself, “Will this still be an issue<br />
next week?”<br />
If the answer is no, then don’t give it more<br />
‘emotional bandwidth’ than it deserves.<br />
• Start the day positively – Increasing<br />
your enjoyment of your job can be as<br />
simple as having a positive mind-set.<br />
Our frame of mind dictates how we<br />
respond to challenges.<br />
Many people find it helps to begin each<br />
morning with a walk, meditation or<br />
reading from an inspiring book.<br />
• Set clear objectives – A large source<br />
of frustration for business owners is<br />
failing to achieve daily objectives or<br />
complete tasks, but an even greater<br />
source of aggravation can come from not<br />
having any objectives in the first place.<br />
Performance<br />
is so closely<br />
related to<br />
enjoyment and<br />
motivation.<br />
Often the<br />
source of our<br />
unhappiness is<br />
related to our<br />
expectations of<br />
the job, as much<br />
as the job itself<br />
Therefore, it’s important to clarify what<br />
you expect from each day.<br />
Have at least one thing that absolutely<br />
must be done on each day’s agenda so<br />
that no matter what happens, you can feel<br />
a sense of achievement.<br />
• Take a break – Productivity is lost<br />
the longer you go on without pausing to<br />
recharge the batteries. This is not only<br />
true during the day, when several breaks<br />
are necessary, but longer term when it<br />
comes to taking holidays.<br />
Many business owners feel their<br />
business can’t survive without them,<br />
but too often this is a misconception<br />
and results in exhaustion and lower<br />
levels of job satisfaction.<br />
An absence of balance between work<br />
and relaxation can also lead to full-scale<br />
burnout, which will force you to be absent<br />
from your business anyway!<br />
In order to escape your business from<br />
time to time, you need to ensure your<br />
staff are equipped to cope without you.<br />
• Delegate, delegate, delegate – I have<br />
spoken to many business owners over the<br />
years who won’t leave their business for<br />
more than a day at a time for fear there<br />
will be nothing left when they return.<br />
This says more about them than their<br />
employees or the business itself!<br />
Effective empowerment and delegation<br />
frees up the owner to focus on the bigpicture<br />
tasks and strategy, as well as<br />
giving them time to ‘smell the roses’ and<br />
truly enjoy what they do.<br />
Ultimately, the happier you are at<br />
work, the more productive you will be.<br />
Even implementing a few of the above<br />
strategies is likely to improve your mindset,<br />
reduce stress, and assist you in<br />
achieving your potential.<br />
DAVID BROWN is co-founder<br />
and business mentor with Retail<br />
Edge Consultants. Learn more:<br />
retailedgeconsultants.com<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>2021</strong> | 101
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