How the Problem of Success is that the World Conspires to Stop you Doing the Thing that You Do

I encourage you to read the writer Neil Gaiman‘s 2012 graduation keynote address. It offers invaluable advice on dealing with failure, and on being successful, in creative fields. Although it is primarily addressed at artists, I believe it is quite applicable to entrepreneurs, who are another type of creators.

The piece of advice that struck me is related to success, after the usual initial failure phase. (“The problems of failure are hard. The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.”)

“The biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful. There was a day when I looked up and realised that I had become someone who professionally replied to email, and who wrote as a hobby. I started answering fewer emails, and was relieved to find I was writing much more.” And that is of course the issue for all successful entrepreneurs; working on the company is taking lots of effort and we are doing less of what we wanted to develop when we created the organisation.

There is a lot of advice about how to deal with failure. Not so much on how to deal with success, be it whole or limited. However it can also make people miserable. Make sure your reflect on what you get drawn in when you start being successful, and decide what you really want to do.