In a similar vein, while I could certainly use an assistant, I don’t need one for business jobs. The fact is, there is nothing about my business that I consider to be “drudge work.” I love every single aspect of it, and I have the specialized skills to do it all. I’m lucky enough to be doing the work I was born to do and spent my life prepping for. There is certainly “drudge work” I want to get rid of, however. What I need is someone who can run the errands, do the shopping, change the litter boxes, mow the lawns, vacuum the house, put a plate of healthy food in front of me twice a day, and go see what the rabbit has found to chew on this time. What I could use, in short, is a domestic partner--and of course, another fact that Landers doesn’t mention is that successful self-employed people almost never are single. Naturally, you can hire someone to do these sorts of tasks for you, but a “virtual assistant” in another state won’t be that person. I’m sure other readers will be entrepreneurs in similarly specialized areas in which their most draining “drudge jobs” aren’t related to their business.
I wish Landers had put even more stress on his book’s most important message: “The Secret of Momentum.” He cites Jean Paul Sartre’s observation that people are paralyzed when they have too many choices, and end up doing nothing at all. I can testify to this reality. My work now consists of multiple projects, none of which can be completed in one day, or even one week, and which are all equally important. If I work on any one of them, I am prone to feel guilty that I’m not working on the other five instead. I have to find a balance in which I allocate time to work on each project in the most fruitful way possible.
This is the rationale for Landers’ step-by-step, 100-day plan. “Inaction bolsters your fear and destroys your confidence. It makes you have more questions and more angst. Inaction makes you frozen in place,” he says. “Action cures inertia. It’s that simple.” Doing at least one thing every single day builds momentum, even if it’s something small. Independent publishers have heard this dictum before, from book marketing guru John Kremer, who advises every author or small publisher to do at least one thing to market his or her book every single day. It does make a difference.
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