You spend all hours of the day working and stressing over your business, but this can cause you to lose focus and your performance can slip. Here's how overworking yourself can be more negative than positive.
Low quality work
As a small business owner, you want to be the best at what you do but by overworking yourself and taking on too much work, it is likely that the quality of your work will suffer. The more you take on, the lower the chance that you'll excel at your tasks. This may mean you do a less than adequate job on the things that matter most. As the Harvard Business Review points out: you are simply more likely to make mistakes when you are overworked and tired.
Too tired to listen
It is important as a small business owner that you are able to give clients and staff your undivided attention and contribute creative or insightful ideas during meetings. However if you are extremely tired and overworked, chances are you may not follow what your clients or staff are saying, nor will you be able to respond as well to questions or be able to initiate suggestions. Clients might even feel that you are disrespecting them, wasting their time as well as your own.
Mental and physical health decline
When you work too hard it can take a serious toll on your body. Not only can you become irritable, depressed and anxious but also you may experience a plethora of health problems that further exacerbate the situation. This may mean you become grumpy with clients and staff, leading to a negative work environment that is bad for productivity. Furthermore if you become too ill, you may end up having to take a lot of time off work to recover.
Poor decision-making
As a small business owner it is important that you make the right decisions and are prudent in your actions. There may be times when you cannot afford to make poor decisions. If your judgment is impaired you may take actions you later regret. It is better to hand over some tasks to someone else, hire a virtual assistant to aid you with important chores, or delay the least important tasks for later. All of this will be well worth the while if it entails you can regain your concentration and dedicate your energies and intelligence to the important decisions you need to make.
Drop in profits
A long workday may not lead to increased revenue but decreased revenue. It is wrong to think that the more you work the more you will produce. If you are tired, making mistakes and not doing your job properly day in and day out, you may be unable to perform the tasks that allow your business to make a profit.
The bottom line is overworking can simply be bad for business. When you have no energy, are exhausted your brain does not perform properly and when your brain cannot perform properly you simply cannot work properly!
