Work smarter, not harder.

Many people envision an entrepreneur as being someone who works 18-hour days, doing nothing but eating, sleeping and breathing his or her business. We tend to paint the picture of someone so driven to succeed that their entire life involves working. Of course, hard work is a key to succeeding as an entrepreneur — it takes grit, after all.

 But it doesn’t quite look like that in reality: Working every waking minute of the day isn’t going to automatically make you a successful entrepreneur. This approach would mean that the entrepreneur is responsible for doing everything, like the old adage, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” That approach may work occasionally, but the majority of people aren’t capable of sustaining such a grueling pace for a long period of time.

Overworking leads to fatigue, which leads to errors. Additionally, how many people truly have the skills to do everything? Most of us can do a couple of things really well. There are other things we are average at, and plenty of things that, let’s face it, we are just not good at. You have to learn how to work smarter, not harder, and it’s a mindset that will take some time to get used to.