about burning ships

Summary

the burn-the-ships story gets told a lot in entrepreneur circles. you cut off every option except the one you’re committed to, and that forces you to make it work. there’s truth to it. there’s also a version of it that wrecks your life.

the version that works isn’t burning your marriage and your health to commit to the business. it’s burning the option to keep working past a fixed time each day. setting a hard stop forces you to figure out what actually matters before the timer runs out.

here’s how I run it. I cap my work hours. that cap is non-negotiable. when the time is shorter than the task list, I have to ruthlessly cut. the side effect: efficiency goes up, because long hours are usually a symptom of bad prioritization, not high commitment.

think of it like a game. you only have this many hours today. what’s the highest-leverage move you can make? then play that move and walk away. the people who work 14 hours a day aren’t usually committed, they’re disorganized.

Transcript

introduction to the concept of “burning the ships”

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. All right, let’s talk about burning the ships today. Everyone’s favorite metaphor and what it actually means and how you should think about this not only in business, but your personal life as well. This is the better human business podcast.

historical background and significance of the metaphor

I’m Jerred Moon and you’ve heard the story before, right? It goes back to the 1500s when Cortez was trying to conquer the Aztec empire. And apparently in researching this, it even goes back further than that to Roman kings and Muslim commanders and all these different, uh, points throughout history where ultimately they wanted to really force their men to commit to the mission.

They wanted to make sure that they are fully committed to the expedition, the idea that, you know, everything that was happening. And so when they landed on shore, they either sank their ships or burned their ships or made their ships unusable. So everyone would have to focus on the mission. And it’s actually really important back then not to get too historical, but I was just like reading the research in preparation for this con, this podcast, I thought it was really interesting as like Cortez did it mainly because a lot of his men were going to be dissenters.

They were going to like leave. They’re just going to go back to Cuba. They did. They had no interest in like maybe being fully committed to the mission. He’s like, fine, well, we’ll just sink these ships. He didn’t actually burn them. He sank them. But there are other, you know, stories throughout history where burning the ships has come along.

how “burning the ships” applies to modern business practices

Anyway, it’s been romanticized over the years, but it’s a pretty cool story. Pretty cool metaphor when we talk about committing, right? And a lot of people like it. I love it too. I’m not, I’m not saying this is bad at all, but I want to talk about burning the ships to improve your personal life and also burning the ships in, in your business life to have a better business.

So what does it mean? Well, just like Cortez, just like we talked about, you just kind of eliminate your other options. And I really feel like when you eliminate other options, you’re forced to focus on this one course until you succeed. And it’s really important. It’s very important for kind of burning the ships for going to like going from part-time to full-time.

The burn the ship mentality is huge in business. It’s like you got to burn the ship at some point. Your lifeline back to shore is always going to be that job, that W2 wage, like whatever. It’s just holding you on a leash. If you have this other thing that you’ve started and it’s doing well, but it’s not getting to that next point.

the dangers of overcommitment in business and personal life

It’s because you can’t give it the time. So you’ve got to burn the ships, right? You’ve got to, you’ve got to fully commit to the mission of what you’re trying to do, but it can be taken too far. It absolutely can be taken too far. And what I have seen is people will burn the ships and when they burn the ships, their level of commitment increases so much so that they burn another island that they weren’t intentionally meaning to burn, which is their relationships either with their spouse, their kids, you know, their family, they burn the lifeline there as well.

You’re not able to get back because you spent too much time. You were focused too hard, dedicated too much to the mission, too committed. So it goes both ways. Like it can be a really good thing. It can force you to focus on your goals and block everything else out. Have no backup plan, no plan B, nothing else, no contingency.

It’s just this has to work. I’m going to make it work. But that level of focus and commitment burns the personal bridges, it burns the relationships, it burns the family ties. And we don’t want that to happen, right? Not in this podcast, not in this community. This is the Better Human Business podcast.

strategies for balancing intense focus in business with personal life

We want to make you better and your business better at the same time. So here’s how I have done that over the years. And it’s by playing a game. The game is you only get a set number of hours to work each day. That’s the game. So I’m burning the ships, so to speak, from business, from the business bridge to my personal life.

So just stick with me for a second as I lay that out. But what’s happening is I burned the ships to become a full-time entrepreneur. I quit the jobs, I got rid of all the lifelines, I went all in, I dedicated, and I could see that I went down that path of too committed, blocked too much out early on to where it was hurting my relationships.

And so I was like, well, this isn’t going to work long term. I could see the writing on the wall that this was, that the pace I was going on was not sustainable, one, for my health, two, for my family, my relationships with other human beings. It just was not going to work long term. And so then I made a new, I burned some more boats.

the efficiency game: setting work-hour limits

And that is, the boat that I burn is a boat I burn every single day. Okay, and what I do is if I have five hours to work today, eight hours to work today, seven hours, nine hours, doesn’t matter. That’s the game. It’s like I’m playing a video game. I have six hours of dedicated work today that I’m allowed, that I have before there’s a cutoff time.

And after that cutoff time, I have to burn the boats from my business. Once I get to my family, I can’t come back. There’s no coming back. You like shut the computer off, like turn it off, make it hard to come back to work. That way you are burning the ships to make sure that you have a good personal life.

You’re setting yourself up to where you will succeed on the personal side as well. And this is what a lot of people don’t do. They only focus on let’s burn the ships to everything so we can succeed financially, business growth, but then they might unfortunately take a crap on their personal lives and that’s not what we want.

practical tips for becoming more efficient in business

And so when you look at your life, your business as a game, like, hey, you only have a set amount of time to get this done. You know, that’s, that changes things, right? It makes you more efficient. I know in the, in the fitness side, I always throw a little bit of shade on people who train like two, three hours a day because I know, I know guys like that and I only ever train 45 minutes to an hour a day.

It’s been like that for two decades and that’s mainly because I want to do other things with my life. I, and I love training. I could train more. Like I’ve, I’ve been in that situation, I’ve done it, but ultimately I always throw the shade at like, Hey, any idiot can train two hours, three hours per day and see results.

It’s a lot harder to see the results that you want. Only training. And I’m talking about specific, specifically fitness here. It takes a lot more efficiency. It takes a lot better programming. It takes better mindset, more focus if you’re only going to be training 45 minutes a day, but you also want results like you want performance.

conclusion: embracing a balanced approach to commitment and focus

You want to look a certain way. You have to be really dialed in and in a lot of areas to see results. And if you, if you’re not that dialed in, you don’t have great programming, then you can just put in more time, right? And that’s why I say any idiot can do that. Any idiot can just add more time. And I’m going to say that for business as well.

Like any idiot can just work 16 hours a day. But to me, your efficiency is off the charts awful. If you’re, if you’re working that much and you’re just not increasing your income, nothing’s working. Like it’s just not working. Then it’s time to move on. Like it’s time to do something else. Like you’re not efficient.

And if your business is growing like, okay, is it worth it? Is it, is it worth all that extra time? Now don’t confuse what I’m saying right now with starting. Starting might be different and it can be different for a lot of people starting to get that match lit in business when you first start can be very difficult.

That takes a lot. It’s going to be taking a lot of hours, but at some point if you’re putting in those ridiculous work hours at each and every single day, what’s wrong with you? Like why aren’t you more focused? How do you not know what to prioritize in the beginning? You might have no idea what to prioritize, but over time you should realize what actually moves the needle and what doesn’t, where you’re wasting your time and where your time is more valuable.

And then you have to ultimately optimize, become more efficient. You can actually squeeze down to a four hour day, a five hour day or whatever. You can, you could do these things cause you realize what actually moves the needle and what doesn’t. And then once you set the rules of the game to where, well, I’m only allowed to put in this many hours per day, it’s going to make you incredibly efficient.

And this is a, an exercise I run people through all the time to help them identify what the most important things are. You don’t have to do like actually only do what I’m going to say, but just go through the exercise. So if I said, Hey, you got eight hours to work today. What are you going to do to grow the business?

And let’s say this is just like a focused work day. You just get you and your office complete quiet. There’s no nobody to provide a service to. There’s no meetings, there’s no phone calls, there’s no interruptions. You have eight hours. What are you going to work on? And then give me that list. And I’m like, okay, great.

Now you have four hours. What are you going to work on? Well, you probably have to cut some things off the list, right? But you’re going to, you’re going to analyze the list and you’re going to mark some things off. You’re going to be like, oh, well I wouldn’t do this, this or that, but okay, cool.

Now you have two hours. What do you do? And then you cut some more. You analyze, you’re like, what’s the most important things? And once you do that, I’m like down to like, okay, you have one hour. What’s the most important thing you’re going to get done? Whatever order you mark those things off, you know, you now know what the most important to the least important is.

And that’s the mindset you need to get into to become more efficient within your time that you’re allotted to work. And then you can actually cut things off and you can go be with your family, your spouse, your friends, whoever, and maintain those relationships. But burn the ships back to work at the end of the day and be more efficient during the work day.

So burning the ships, it’s a cool, cool story and I like it, but it can come with a cost if you focus on the mission too much. So ultimately burn the ships, grow your business, but then burn the ships to your business when it’s time to be a human again with the people you love. Try harder.