Too many entrepreneurs idolize the ‘hero entrepreneur’ depicted by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. But in their race for profitability, they fail to realize that these superstar businessmen had to struggle with years of debilitating stress and anxiety before they reached the pinnacle of success.
This stress comes from both inside and outside of your workplace. Thankfully, with new technological strides being made in all facets of business like business management automation, marketing automation, automated customer service solutions and other new tools, promise to make business processes more manageable, helping entrepreneurs deal with some of the piled-up stress.
And not everyone who walks through darkness can make it out successfully.
In January 2013, the founder of Ecomom, Jody Sherman, took his own life. His death shook the start-up business community, leading to some difficult discussions about mental health in the entrepreneurship world. Conversations also included the death of the 22-year old Ilya Zhitomirsky, who had found fame for creating Diaspora’s social networking platform.
After these unfortunate incidents, more entrepreneurs have been open to their experiences and struggles with the stigma surrounding anxiety at the workplace.
How can stress affect your work, and what practical steps can you take to alleviate it?
Read on to find out.
How Can Stress Affect Your Personal And Professional Life?
According to a study, 45% of entrepreneurs are reported to be more stressed than 42% of ordinary employees, and 30% of them are diagnosed with depression, compared to 15% of ordinary workers.
Prolonged exposure to chronic stress can lead to insomnia, substance abuse, weight problems, and even suicidal thoughts. It is essential to know the dark side of entrepreneurship to effectively handle these burdens.
Here are a few ways stress can creep into your life:
Physical Effects
Entrepreneurs usually try to do a lot at once.
Do you often find yourself taking up more projects on any given day? You communicate with clients, employees, partners and stakeholders; and also take it upon yourself to hire the right people and ensure that enough resources are available.
All this hard work puts an overwhelming amount of pressure, causing an immense amount of strain on your physical health.
You may experience loss of appetite, social withdrawal, irritability, and inflexibility. Additionally, you may notice that you aren’t sleeping enough and feeling lethargic due to that.
Mental Effects
Stress can also make people more aggressive and, in extreme cases, hostile. This can affect relationships with family members, co-workers, and business partners. It may also affect your ability to make smart decisions, and you’ll find yourself worrying about too many things all at once.
If you often find yourself defending or justifying your behaviors, it may be time to take a long hard look at what brought them on.
Many entrepreneurs have also reported increased intensities of ADHD, bipolar disorder, and chronic anxiety.
How To Alleviate Stress From Your Work-Life?
Technology has long been the answer to many of our problems. While many people are skeptical of automation, they should also realize the value that this technology has to offer. It can reveal opportunities and provide entrepreneurs with the added benefits to streamline processes and make it less stressful to achieve their goals.
Here are a few things automation can add to your work-life balance:
Getting More Done In Less Time
Automation can help you to complete more tasks simultaneously, so you can get a lot done in very little time.
For example, an automated email management system can organize your emails by importance or other filters so you can respond to them as and when the need be. So you can all the emails with the subject “XYZ Project,” and all emails regarding the project will be organized in a different folder.
This way, you won’t need to stress out over an overflowing inbox.
Additionally, instead of replying to each email individually, automation lets you use auto-responses to let people know that their query has been heard. Not only does this improve customer relationships, but it also saves time by reducing repetitive tasks.
Remembering Important Events And Appointments
Completing routine tasks or following up with a client after a meeting are recurring tasks that you might delay or even forget. Maybe you want to capture all your notes on one file and send a plan to clients, or perhaps you want to generate an invoice or receipt. Instead of doing these routine tasks all by yourself after every meeting, automation can remind you of these tasks by automatically adding them to your calendar and automatically sending you a notification. You can also use a task management system and an electronic calendar to organize your tasks and appointments in one place.
Managerial Tasks Made Easy
It’s rare and almost difficult for an entrepreneur to know every aspect of their business. This is why they hire managers and department heads to look out for different tasks and how they’re done. Technology can provide companies and entrepreneurs with tools and software to handle their work’ managerial aspects. For example, Trello and TSheets have different tools to cover accounting, payroll, and even many administrative tasks.
Accelerated Learning
The access to automation and modern technology has allowed entrepreneurs to communicate with employees and guide them efficiently over a distance.
Instead of holding in-person conferences and meetings, leaders can now share useful insights through virtual platforms like Zoom. Similarly, websites like Yelp and Angie’s List have made it possible for entrepreneurs and managers to understand their customers’ needs and create products that deliver results in real-time.
Also, numerous learning management systems allow managers, team-leads, and employees to collaborate, edit and share important files.
To Conclude
Starting a business from scratch is never easy. Keeping in mind everything from planning to production to execution, it is no surprise that entrepreneurs often find themselves having minimal to zero work-life balance. However, today’s latest technology is leveling up with every passing day. Entrepreneurs who were previously restricted by expenses and relevant expertise can now leverage these tools to make their processes more manageable.
Not only does tech make your processes more effortless, but it also eliminates a huge chunk of stress from your life that you didn’t even realize was there.
Automation can make your entrepreneurial ventures more rewarding and accessible than ever before!