I read an article today regarding entrepreneurship and what drives people to it. It explained that the lust and desire for creation and freedom is what entices us. The author explains how her children has gotten used to her 60-70-hour work weeks and that it’s attitude on a personal level that drives most people to this behavior. So is a desire to break lose from the regularities of nine to five work all we need? What, then, is the missing ingredient that causes so many to fail?
As I’ve never started a company, I can’t say for sure. However, if I were adventurous enough to take a guess then I would say passion. It’s could very well be the differentiating factor between good and great, success and failure. I’m not saying that every entrepreneur hitting a failure lacks passion - of course not. I’m merely stating that it’s one of the essential factors that many overlook. There are no textbook requirements to starting a company but at least to me, it seems logical that a huge passion means a huge advantage. People go to great lengths for love.
Perhaps it’s too logical, so logical that it was left out of the article. Perhaps not. If we look closer at how the world works today, it becomes apparent that love isn’t necessarily a deciding factor in many major decisions. People separate the professional from the personal and for what? A belief that love, an emotion, clouds our minds? Perhaps people believe that by ignoring it, we make rational and logical decisions. It makes sense.
REXML could not parse this XML/HTML: <p>This leads to people taking about their (pick a number) 60-hour work weeks. They talk about careers as if they’re completely separated from our personal life. Our initial intention is to make logical decisions but as it turns out, rationality provides the best guidance first after we find what we truly love. Once we find that, work ceases to be work. When we’re no longer able to count our working hours - when work has become so transparent that we can’t tell the difference between business and pleasure - that’s happiness. <p>That’s what drives some of us. We’re in pursuit.</p>