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How many of these questions can you honestly agree with?

• Within the past 6 months I took time off from my business to relax.
• I leave the stress of business behind at the end of the day.
• I rarely work more than 50 hours per week.
• I plan vacations months in advance.
• I have a sense of freedom in my life.

If you can’t agree with just one, OK. But if you find yourself shaking your head at most or all of them, you are probably working too much with results that don’t match your effort. 

“Turning pro is a mindset. If we are struggling with fear, self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc., the problem is, we're thinking like amateurs. Amateurs don't show up. Amateurs crap out. Amateurs let adversity defeat them. The pro thinks differently. He shows up, he does his work, he keeps on truckin', no matter what.”

Steven Pressfield

It’s so easy to put things off until later, especially if it’s something you really don’t want to do. This is how dishes and laundry pile up. For the entrepreneur this could mean the accounting, the marketing, or really anything that drives you to surf Facebook and avoid doing.

Multitasking is the biggest myth of modern times. We are all addicted to being busy and talking about how much we have to do. Furthermore, we fool ourselves into thinking we can do more than one thing at a time and do them all well. 

We can’t. Multitasking has never been and will never be a real thing. We just think we should be able to do it because the expectation is that we, as Americans, should get the most out of every minute. We take pride in how packed our schedules are. But study after study has shown that our commitment to the idea of multitasking is hurting us rather than helping us. 

One morning, I had to walk my dogs alone, since my wonderful wife was out of town.  At first, I popped my headphones in and started listening to Comedy Central.  But for some reason after I walked out of my home's Wi-Fi range, the signal crapped out, and so I was met with silence.  Rather than drag my phone out of my pocket, I just walked with the silence, and after a couple of minutes of consciously enjoying the sun and view of the lakes and my cute dogs, my brain popped out the answer to a complicated problem I'd been thinking about for a couple of days. Eureka!

Most people dread meetings. Stuffy conference rooms, bored people, and they usually seem to drag on forever. Over the years I have learned that walking meetings are a great format for one-on-one meetings, and are great for groups of three people as well. Not only are they far more engaging and fun, they also offer clear benefits related to physical health, relationship building, efficiency and creativity.

One of Awesome’s values is Apply Curiosity. Being curious is a powerful antidote to those times that you are frustrated or just don’t feel like being an understanding, connected leader. Here’s how to get into a curious mindset -- and it’s easier than you might think.

There are times when I’m sure I am right, when I’m sure the other person is wrong, when I’m angry or frustrated, or when I just don’t care. You may have felt like this at some point too. Those are the times that curiosity is the most valuable.

Here are some of the reasons curiosity helps most when it feels most wrong:

“Wait, what? It’s a silent retreat?!”

I finally signed up for a three day introduction to meditation retreat, with plans to build a regular meditation practice. I had convinced myself that it would be a little meditation, some learning, and some hiking in the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains. Upon arrival, I learned that this “partially silent” retreat meant total silence for about 22 hours per day. We could only talk on an afternoon break and at dinner. Uhh... crap.

I might not be the biggest talker in the world, but sitting still AND being quiet is really not my cup of tea.

But I learned a lot.

Welcome to the Awesome guest blog series! Our first guest post is by Avital Ungar, owner of the incredibly popular Avital Food Tours in San Francisco, California.

I started my company to be able to do what I love full time: eat and travel. Yet I had become a slave to my business.

Scaling, or growing rapidly, is a high priority for many startups and established companies. Every element of scale can be tricky, but today we're going to focus on the human element of scale.

Humans can be pesky, inconsistent, confusing, and often baffling creatures. As entrepreneurs, we at times love them, fear them, and occasionally wish we could ignore them. But no company can exist without them (sorry, robot armies) and no company can scale without focusing on them.

“We screwed up my biggest account. What should I do?!”  

Sarah, one of my younger employees came to me early one Thursday morning in a panic.  I had to quickly decide how to react. Should I micromanage, decide for her, or risk losing everything?

Big picture, how can you train your team to handle the infinite number of problems that can emerge every day? The answer is simple: You can’t.