The Importance of Being Idle

I can't be the only person out there who has trouble not being occupied. By that, I don't mean in some strange obsessive compulsive manner, or a neat-freak who's constantly reordering the CD collection - I mean in a 'pursuit' kind of way.

Let me explain further. I started Floating Point, um, five years ago - maybe - not sure to tell you the truth. The first three years were an absolute uphill slog each and every step of the way. I had to learn how to apply decals, there was the website to sort out, the physics of driving a plotter and all of it had to be done while I worked around my regular job - which meant an obscene number of late nights to the point I'd frequently nap over lunch.

Something strange then happened about eighteen months ago - it was all done. The website although tragically crap was more or less done. I'd caught up on my accounting, all orders were out the door, I had a number of prospects in the pipe and all my software was reasonably recent so I wasn't constantly having to fight with bugs. The prospect of not having to do anything to do with FPDI was quite horrible actually. For three years I had performed mental juggling of a constantly changing list of priorities - and now it had crept up on me that that list was down to zero.

It was a bit scary to tell you the truth. I felt like I should be doing something. Guilt sunk in that I wasn't being busy, I panicked and started to learn to fly - which is an entirely different story all together, but it serves to underline a point that I started off with - are small business owners a breed of people who just like to be 'busy' - or is it that we can't stand to be unoccupied but hate Suduko? :)

I've often described to my wife that running FPDI - for all it's pain in those first few years, wasn't a job to me - it was an interest and a self-pursuit. Perhaps it's that sense of achievement that a runner gets after completing a marathon that in someway translates into something more business oriented for owners like myself. Or, of course it could be that we're all just outright crazy and that staying up to 2am and crippling ourselves with debt is far more satisfying than lactic acid coursing through our muscles.

When it boils down it, is it just that - that we see it as a 'sport'? Something that as business owners we work at, honing our skills, getting better and the very irritating problem of simply finding more interesting problems to resolve and work through. Perhaps that's one of the differentiating (I'm not saying 'only' here) factors between those businesses that make it, and those that don't. Those that do have people who are as passionate about their business as some people are about playing bridge. I'm probably not breaking new ground there with that observation but it is kind of neat to put into ones own words.

So here's the really scary question - how the heck will we ever quit? Can we ever 'let go'? If small-business owners retire, do they explode? Go nuts? What happens to them?

I say 'no' - we can't (let go). I've always maintained that if someone came along and gave me a big sack of cash for FPDI, I'd turn the keys over to Lola (the plotter) without a second thought. The sad thing here is that I don't think I'd stop needing to do 'something'. I have no idea what that next something might be, but I don't think after all my life doing 'something' that I could ever really detune from further ideas and opportunities.

Here's an interesting thought and one that Seth touched upon in one of his books - can that 'passion' be taught? Surely, you either like it, or you don't? I'm sure plenty of business have got by with very well trained executives at the helm that hated every minute of the experience. Could they have done as well, if not better - if they'd had passionate staff leading the charge?

OK - back to earth. Last thought and one that started off this whole post. How do you 'declutter' - and by that I mean, stop the thoughts from jangling around so that you can at least get a half-descent nights sleep without lying awake thinking about them? I've got a pad of paper and a pen (which lights up!) by the bed that I scribble on, and I find that helps - but I'd like to hear if anyone else has other solutions.

Bit of a rushed wrap up there, sorry for that - ideally I'd like to burble some more but I need to go to bed. The ideas are calling. >:)

Take care, people...