Don't do it!

Do you do everything you're told? Whether you like it or not? For the solopreneur, it is particularly tempting to give in to those myriad authority figures who tell us what to do. If we just do everything this guy tells us on his podcast, we are sure to be successful. "You have to sell something on your website." "You have to blog." "You have to give up carbs."

Well, DON'T!

There is a lot of good information out there. But that doesn't mean it is right for everyone, especially for the small business owner. Listen to your instinct. If you don't want to do something, or can't get yourself motivated to execute, you've got two choices: 

a) Don't do it. 
b) Get somebody else to do it. 

When you dread a particular task, it is a scientifically proven fact, it takes you longer to complete it. (Well, maybe not yet, but I am going to write to Bill Nye about this.) And then you are miserable. You are miserable thinking about it, you are miserable trying to do it; then you don't like your results and you are miserable afterwards. It's just a long, painful train of bad feeling.

Here is a DON'T DO IT example: I can't stand tweeting. Yeah, I know, I'm a writer. Go figure. I dutifully started a few twitter accounts, and I simply don't tweet. The world has not come to an end. I'm still in business. No one has ever walked up to me and said, "You know, I was going to hand you this multi-million dollar contract, but, you don't tweet, so, never mind."

GET SOMEBODY ELSE TO DO IT: My new yard was driving me crazy. At my old house, I loved gardening, mowing, landscaping. It was a source of joy. Here in Charleston, no matter what I did, the lawn never looked good enough. Never looked finished. The leaves never stop falling. I was devoting hours and hours every week to a lawn that is a 1/10th the size of my former place and I was miserable. After a year of this, I finally broke down and hired somebody to take care of the lawn. Allen, my lawn guy, patron saint of Zoysia grass, accomplishes in one hour what it took me an entire weekend of sweat and depression to do rather poorly.

Here's the practical reason for DON'T DO IT, if saving your mental health is not reason enough for you:

When you don't do one thing, you have the time to do another. Something you enjoy. Something you are good at.

Giving up Twitter and the lawn mower gives me more time for writing. Other people dread blogging. I can't stop myself. I write two of my own blogs, and I blog for others. I love it. I never run out of ideas, and the process goes so quickly for me, that I sit down to write one blog, and wind up with enough material for three future blogs as well. And the really cool bonus? People are reading my blogs and walking up to me and saying, "Hey, can you write for me?"

So get out there and … DON'T DO IT!