Part 2 Capacity and Freedom from Blumer CPAs on Vimeo.
Transcript:
This is a part two video on discussions on capacity and professional service and creative service companies, and it’s really important. We talked about exchanges and limitations on the first video. This part two is really freedom and capacity. Freedom is this word that I’ve written about for entrepreneurs. They love, they’re addicted to their freedom. They love their freedom. But here’s what I wrote in my journal, as I was working through thoughts on capacity, here’s what I said. I said, “Our limited capacity of mind and time are chewed up and we hurt ourselves and others. What we really need is a realistic view of our limitations, so we can make better priority decisions with our no’s.”
And let me explain some of that. Basically, you get really good at managing your capacity as an entrepreneur when you get good at saying no. So to an entrepreneur, a calendar, an open calendar is all the available yeses in the whole world. And they’ll say yes to anything because they’re curious and creative and they love everything. And so all of these yeses chew through a lot of capacity. And what you end up failing to do is devote the right capacity to the right thing, the effective thing.
And so entrepreneurs are really good when they learn to say no to the right things, not to everything, but no to the right things. And when do you say, no? You say no about the future. So you don’t wait until something approaches you, an opportunity, and then you say no. You have to plan your no’s in advance and that’s hard to do, but we do that with a calendar. We basically say, here’s all the things we’re going to do. So we lock in our yeses into our calendar, into the future, because capacity management is always done in the future.
And then the no’s are things we’re aware of saying it’s because the no’s are the things chewing through the capacity that the entrepreneur needs to devote to effective and right things. And it’s hard to do on the fly. So that’s why you plan it in the future.
And so how does this compare to our freedom? Well, freedom, I believe is a word that’s just depicting a wrong thing. Freedom really for an entrepreneur means I don’t have any limitations. And that’s not true. What planning your future, planning the yeses in your future, allowing you to say the right no’s is using the freedom you do have, which is to make the plan. As an entrepreneur, you get to make your plan of your yeses and no’s. As an employee, you don’t, those are done for you, but that freedom is you choosing the no’s and yeses. It’s not doing anything you want. That’s not what freedom means. And if that’s your definition, you may be living the pains and the consequences of that wrong definition.
So I hope that balance of freedom and capacity helps you get more out of life, more out of your capacity, your time, your mental commitment, to the great things you do in life so that you can keep transforming the world and changing lives. I hope that helps. Take care.
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