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10 things. That’s the amount I had written on my list for a day in the week.

1. Brainstorm 5 article ideas for the week with outline
2. Apply for freelance writing jobs in Upwork, Freelancer
3. Re-design Slice of P.I.E website
4. Schedule 4 articles for Slice of P.I.E, Medium and LinkedIn
5. Design visuals for cover pictures for the 4 articles
6. Come up with infographics for articles
7. Research companies for investments
8. Outline and write 2 articles for clients
9. Outline and write 1 article for Slice of P.I.E
10. Learn SEO Copywriting for 1 hour

The 10 things took me 14 hours of the day. I started from 7 am, and only stopped around 10 pm. And I did this for about 2 months plus.

I keep telling myself that all of these are necessary. I am not making much money (send help! Writers don’t make much at all!) so I need to work more hours and extra hard to do so.

However, the more I did it, the more I saw that I was making mistakes and blunders. I am writing this article to let you know that we can’t do it all, and why we must learn to ask for help from other people.

It will affect the success of your business, and also your sanity.

Biggest Mistake

I can’t do it all. No man is an island. If you have been reading my content, you will know that recently, I have been struggling with my writing and business. Engagement for Slice of P.I.E. is very little, and trying to get clients is hard too.

The more I thought about how bad things were, the more I thought to myself that I needed to work even harder. The list keeps building and building, with the number of things I want to and need to do.

My wife told me, “You need to get help. You are severely burned out.” But I was stubborn. Help means needing to pay money for it. And money is something I don’t have.

I kept at it, thinking I could handle everything by myself. How wrong was and still I am. There was just one day when I listed down all the things for the day. And I flat out just ripped the paper apart in frustration, thinking what will all these things amount to?

Luckily for me, my wife is the best thing that ever happened to me. She sat me down and told me that I needed to hire a writer and social media person to help.

“You can’t sustain like this. You can’t keep going like this. There are things that you are good at and things that you aren’t. Let other people help you. Let me help you”, she said.

I realized I was leading myself to ruin. Because of my arrogance and pride, I might be destroying everything that I try to build. And that’s what scared me.

I Enlisted Help

As my wife suggested, I decided to hire people to help me. Firstly, I am writing too much content and articles. I took a step back and decided to hire two freelance writers @stephaniegoh and @jakelim, and a social media person, @Cristallim to help design and schedule posts.

That freed up time for me to think more about the core business of the company. What type of products do I want to sell to people? What kind of services and value do I want to provide? What kind of problems do I want to solve? What kind of business do I want to build?

Most importantly, it freed up time for me to spend with my family and friends. And it made me realise that it was the reason why I wanted to move away from corporate and build a business of my own. To have flexibility, freedom and time for what I valued – family and friends.

And it has certainly been better for my mental and physical health. I have more time to exercise a day (up to 3 times a day) and spend much of my breakfast, lunch, and dinner time with my wife and family.

There are Things I Am Just Not That Great At

I got to see much better writing and design from other people. And that has been great for me to learn. I have been learning in a lot of courses on writing and social media design, thinking I can master them all. But what stuck out was the realization that I can’t be good at everything.

I learnt that writing has so many areas of improvement and so many ways to go about it. And social media. I am a total novice. I have been trying different things but none seems to have been successful. Seeing what other people are producing made me realise that I have a long way to go.

And this is great. It means that I have much to learn. No man is an island. It takes a team to build something, not on your own.