I personally had an experience when someone was offering me an executive position in a profitable “once-a-startup” company with a ton of equity on the condition I would drop anything else I am doing (the only exception the decision-makers tolerated was having a girlfriend).
At the same time, we have people like Elon Musk (the 2nd richest person in the world) and Richard Branson (billionaire) working on a gazillion of projects. It’s hard to estimate how much time Elon Musk spends on countless side projects like The Boring Company and Neuralink, but at least Tesla and SpaceX consume 40–45 hours per week each. Talking about Richard Branson, just check out the list of his companies.
We don’t know if Elon Musk and Richard Branson are successful because they work on several projects or despite it. We also don’t know if Elon Musk could start doing several projects from early on, or if it’s only something he could take on once he had a lot of capital. Nonetheless, these examples can’t be ignored.
As for myself:
– I have my startup Panda Training making business coaching 100x cheaper with AI.
– I spend some time advising another startup LaunchClub which is a matchmaker for peer SaaS founders.
– I am doing my PhD in Management and Organization focusing on companies that don’t have managers and use Holacracy and Teal as management systems.
All while also spending an hour or two overlooking my investment in the longevity hackathon LongHack.
I observed a number of benefits that such a work-life brings. Let me tell you the reasons why focus might be overrated.