How Speed and Hurry Brought Me to a Screeching Halt: An Invitation to a Better Way of Entrepreneurship (7 min)
Study after study shows that entrepreneurs are 50% more likely to report having a mental health condition than the general population (which is already at an alarmingly high rate). In one study, a whopping 72% of entrepreneurs surveyed self-reported mental health concerns. This trend is set to continue.
My mission is to turn this trend around by helping entrepreneurs and startup leaders succeed in business while staying mentally resilient, emotional stable, spiritually alive, and physically healthy. The world is missing out on too much entrepreneurial potential (short and long-term) being eaten up by stress, anxiety, and hurry.
How are you? “Good, just really busy,” I say proudly.
I said that at least 10 times a day.
This was my life:
60+ hour weeks. Never enough hours in a day. Responding to email while talking to a friend, while crunching numbers in excel, while responding to a text from my wife asking what time I’ll be home.
Thinking about work on weekends. Always have to be connected, ready to respond at any moment just in case. Dreaming about work at night. So many people rooting for me, depending on me.
I try to turn my brain off before going to sleep, but it keeps going. I’m physically still, yes, but my brain, and my spirit don’t catch up until an hour or so later.
Little to no vacation. The thought of vacation is actually stressful. Cram everything in before time off, just to come back to have to dig out of the hole of work I missed out on? No thank you.
And definitely no time for God…but He understands, right?
Meanwhile, inside and outside of work, every free moment spent on my phone
Wake up? Calendar. Texts. Emails.
Waiting in line? News. Slack. Texts.
Driving? “Hey Siri, text Pete…”
Using the bathroom? Texts. Emails. Instagram. (When’s the last time you didn’t look at your phone while sitting on the toilet?)
Walking from my car to the house? More news. Facebook.
About to go to sleep? You get the point.
The average iphone user touches his or her phone 2,617 times per day. Double that for millenials. Triple it for me. 👋🏼
My brain jumps from one thing to another, constantly. I felt like I was an air hockey puck or a pinball, bouncing around, reacting to whatever happened to me in any given moment. Always in a hurry.
…until I could sit on the couch, “relax” and watch Netflix. Then lay in bed for an hour, fall asleep, rinse, and repeat.
I could go on and on about my subconscious obsession with speed and input and stimuli. I had operations background - it was literally my job to find more efficient ways to do everything.
This is just how my brain works: calculating which line in the grocery store will be quickest (variables = number of people in line, number of items in cart, speed of checkout employee, and predicted method of payment; God forbid someone uses cash or coupons), figuring out how to put the dishes away with the fewest lifts and touches, choosing the lane with the fewest cars at the traffic light, etc. - Again, I could go on but you don’t have all day.
The result?
Exhausted, overwhelmed, drained, empty.
At work, worse short-term memory, cloudy thoughts, slower problem solving, less present in conversations, and ironically, lower productivity.
Outside of work? More strained relationships with friends and family. I was less patient and less pleasant to be around. I would tell my wife, “I’m great at multitasking - I can listen to you and read an email at the same time. I do it all the time at work” You can guess how that went.
When I stopped to think about it, it was uncomfortable, so I pushed on.
Looking back, all of my worst moments were when I was in a hurry or had divided attention - as a leader, husband, entrepreneur, dad, friend, and Jesus follower.
It got to the point where I would sit in the shower for 20+ minutes because it felt like my only escape from the constant hyper-stimulated world I had created for myself.
Then what?
I read a book that brought me to a screeching halt. Stopped me dead in my tracks.
I ruthlessly eliminated hurry from my life (read: I actually tried to model my day to day lifestyle after Jesus). Turns out, he knew a thing or two about how to live this life.
In the past, I had tried to just get incrementally better at time management. To find little hacks to save me 30 seconds here and there. Why? If I saved time here, I’ll have more time to do X, Y, and Z.
I did the whole “try harder” thing. It didn’t work. I tried more will power. It didn’t work. I tried every kind of to-do list and time management system you could imagine. None of it worked.
It felt like I was trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose.
So I stopped. ✋🏼
I took the time to write down my priorities in life and business. I worked with my own coach to keep me accountable. I slowed down.
I put God back in the #1 spot.
My wife and I started to observe Sabbath - we reserved a full day each week for rest, worship, life-giving activities we enjoyed, and quality time with friends and family.
I reduced the amount of stimuli my brain took in - a full day off each week from the news, social media, music, podcasts, email, etc. - and I created healthy boundaries and dedicated time for these things during the week.
I created time for daily contemplation, meditation, prayer, journaling, reading Scripture.
I learned how to live without my phone on me at all times (more on how difficult this was later).
I stopped switching lanes every 5 seconds on the highways. I stopped racing people to the checkout line. And make sure you’re sitting down for this one - I stopped binging shows on Netflix. GASP!
NOTE: It’s important to say that all of these things are not bad things and I’m not shaming you if any of this reflects how you live. It’s not that I never watch tv, read the news, or use social media. I’m simply recognizing my human impulse to take good things and give them the level of priority in my life that God deserves.
The result?
And this is is real…
✅ I actually felt a sense of peace and joy. I was able to notice the little things like how beautiful the trees are in my neighborhood or the fact that a friend seemed off.
✅ I was more present to the moment. I became a better listener - to God, clients, my wife, and myself.
✅ I became able to focus on one thing or person at a time.
✅ I was more present to the moment. I became a better listener - to God, clients, my wife, and myself.
✅ I became able to focus on one thing or person at a time.
✅ I had better relationships with God, my wife, and myself.
✅ I became MORE productive. Turns out, I focused on priorities that actually moved the needle. My newfound clarity of thought led to higher quality work and better business outcomes.
✅ What I thought was dwindling creativity surged back to life.
✅ I actually felt a sense of peace and joy. I was able to notice the little things like trash on the sidewalk or the fact that a friend seemed off.
✅I got MUCH better sleep.
It wasn’t easy
Don’t misread this. This was no small undertaking. I essentially fought every habit I had built up over the past 10 years. I literally got phone withdrawal the first few times I went a full day without touching my phone.
On a number of occasions, I reached into my pocket subconsciously expecting it to be there only to be disappointed and disturbed by how involuntary that movement was.
My coach (and my wife) were both there to help keep me accountable. My coach helped me uncover the assumptions and thought patterns that drew me back towards the old way of living and re-programmed those thoughts.
“I have to be able to respond to someone right away.”
“This is what it takes to be successful in business.”
“I love what I do, so it doesn’t matter if I’m always working. I’m young and have the energy.”
“It just has to be like this for a few years, then things will get less busy.”
So what happened to everything you had to get done? Responsibilities don’t just go away because you want them to…
To be honest, you’d be surprised how many “have to do” things are really “choose to do” things.
I did have to make some tough decisions to say “yes” to some things and “no” to others.
This is NOT about not doing things and squandering your God-given potential. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s about letting go of fine things to focus on the most important things.
Do I still do a lot of things? Do I still get stuff done? Yes.
Do I have the same impact as I did before? Is my business growing? Yes + more.
Am I working from a spirit of restfulness instead of restlessness? Do I feel spiritually full and physically alive instead of mentally depleted and emotionally exhausted? Yes.
Is my relationship with God deeper and richer? Absolutely, yes.
The Bottom Line
You can have a full, life-giving schedule that does not lead to anxiety, overwhelm, and a constant state of hurry. But it takes intention. It takes deciding your priorities.
Jesus offers us a better way live. He was never in a hurry, yet he had the greatest impact any single person has ever had in the history of the world.
Hustle and hurry, stress and anxiety are not required for success in business (in fact, I would argue they hinder it), and they are antithetical to what it means to follow Jesus.
If my experiences resonated with you at all, I would love to support you in creating an un-hurried life - one where you operate your business from a place of peace, rest, love, and joy. A life of deep, rich relationship with God. Life to the fullest. I invite you to be a different kind of entrepreneur.
A closing note from Kieran
📝
Here’s the thing..
God created you to be an entrepreneur so you can positively impact society through business. You want to glorify him but you don’t want to sacrifice your family, health, or faith.
The good news is that you weren’t meant to sacrifice those things, and there’s a better way.
The simple truth is - when you put God first, every other area of your life falls into place.
As always the key to the life Jesus invited us to - one marked by love, peace, and joy - can be found in following his example. He showed us how to live through his everyday rhythms. He was never in a hurry - yet, he has had the greatest impact of any person in human history.
Unfortunately, hurry is not a problem that can be fixed by incremental changes and “trying harder” - you will not experience a soul-deep rest while being an entrepreneur with 1% changes. Technology and our culture moves at much too rapid a pace for that to work.
You must attack it - ruthlessly eliminate it.
If you want to experience the peace and rest that Jesus promises while succeeding in the business world, let’s talk about what that looks like for you.
The world will have you think that #hustle and #grind entrepreneurship is incompatible with the peace and rest that Jesus modeled and promised. That’s just not true.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” - Matthew 11:28-30
The nature of following Jesus means we will often be called to be countercultural. This is increasingly true in the hyper-busy, modern world we live in. Christian entrepreneurs are called to be a different kind of entrepreneur.
Let’s be different. Let’s lead by example.
“The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways.” Proverbs 14:8
