Start More Fires.

Are you spending more time putting out fires than starting them? If you are, you probably own your own business. You probably have emails to answer and clients to talk to and meetings to have. You probably sit down to do something and 3 hours later wonder how you’ve only answered 2 emails and in that time, you had 5 more come in. Putting out fires is sometimes part of this crazy adventure but if we don’t get to occasionally start them, we might burn out. No pun intended, or maybe it was… because we have to start fires AND we have to make sure they keep burning.

We are in the business of making things that do not exist. Not the professional fire fighting business. More like the professional fire starting business! Starting fires is in our job description. It’s how we got here. Having “stuff” to do does not excuse us from our work. Email is important, your clients are (very) important, but all of that goes away if we don’t continue to make awesome stuff. That’s where we get confused I think: Our clients don’t pay us to put out fires, they pay us to make stuff. To be creative. If we don’t take care of that part first, eventually we stop getting paid.

If you feel yourself putting out more fires than you’re starting this week, rest, then Start. More. Fires.* Do something that feeds your soul. Get out of the house, find a trail, hike. Make something new, make something awesome. There is not a single reason why we can’t make that happen today. We don’t have time not to. Starting fires is what you do. Stop spending your days putting them out.

Happy fire starting and Monday 🙂

*These are metaphorical fires. Please don’t start real fires. That’s not cool. Unless it’s a campfire… by all means, please start a campfire.