Sleepless nights — are they really worth it?
If you’re a startup founder or entrepreneur you definitely have spent some nights scratching your head(both figuratively and actually ) trying to find answers, solutions, and fixes to the current problems, challenges, or questions you have on the table.
Maybe you’re looking for a loophole in the supply and logistics chain that needs fixing and could be a big break for you if figured out right. You might be looking for possible ways to add value to an already established market and ecosystem that seems stable but you feel is insufficient or needs an improvement however stable and composed it might look on the outside. This is the founders' food(national breakfast )
So sometimes you might be lucky that after you’ve burnt the midnight oil you’ll get something out of it. Prolly not what you’ve been looking for but something else, an insight or alternative market entry tactic. A loophole you think is obvious or visible to all. Yet you were looking for something ingenious, something that hasn’t been witnessed before.
There are nights I’ve stayed awake too, mostly because I’d be working on our codebase or squashing bugs. On very rare occasions I woke up from sleep/bed because I couldn’t find the right amount of peace to sleep. And upon getting out of bed, I’d grab a pen and notebook, sometimes A4 paper and a pencil, and start scribbling things seemingly incoherent down. To my mind, they made perfect sense and I saw how every puzzle piece fits into each other seamlessly. To the ordinary eye, they’d not be more than the squiggles of a 5–6-year-old. These instructions often were business secrets, value propositions, pricing models, and product designs and features. These I downloaded when I least expected; I want to recount the three most pronounced occasions when I had these eureka/lightbulb moments.
Occasion 1: I was showering and in that helpless moment when I was covered under the torrent of water flowing from the shower spout, it was like my brain had been unsealed and plugged into the mains. I received particular information that I wasn’t privy to before. Certain organizations and how to approach them, who to contact, and how to go about it. That shower saved me about 4–6 months of running back and forth that would have been my experimentation trying to further figure out how to close the gap.
Ocassion 2: This will sound crazy but I have to say it. I was worshipping. There was worship sounds playing while I was praying in the spirit. The particular album I’ll share about it when I feel at liberty to do so. As I prayed in the spirit, I sensed something; an opening of a portal. I knew I had come across or stumbled upon something but I was also prepared to walk into it. When I did (enter) I saw events play before my eyes of something in the near future. I saw what was to be done and our(my team and I ) part in it. After seeing it all play out and its end, I moved out with it as my possession. I know if another man/person had entered therein they would have taken it. But I happened to be available and waiting that night. This wasn’t a deliberate act of wanting to access something. I wasn’t lusting after revelation. I was earnestly giving praise to my God, inquiring in His courts.
Ocassion 3: I was asleep on the sofa/couch after a long day of hard work, I had just finished having my supper and was preparing to rest/sleep and I switched off the computer to head to bed to rest, I got in bed and tried sleeping for 30 minutes all in vain, albeit all the exhaustion and tiredness, ideally I should have just slumped off and slept. Alas, I didn’t. I heard a voice tell me to get up and start writing. I scribbled in my notebook from 12:40 to 5:00 am almost like o was connected to the internet and had access to some archives. It was me and my notebook in the dead of the night with all the silence around me. When it clocked 5:30, my eyes had already pulled me through this and needed their rest which I proceeded to avail them with. The details I received that night helped me to refocus my sight and vision on something more productive for my startup.
Of all these three instances, that I call the most remarkable it was never my intention to burn the midnight oil to get an answer for something or try to figure out something.
And sometimes because of our ignorance, It’ll appear like those things are by mistake and are purely based on Chances/coincidental. This is because these moments are elusive and very slippery. However, they are not patterned or coincidental. There are actual patterns that have been set that can be followed. And by so doing you position yourself where they seek after you and find you. That’s the order, not the other way around. They’re things by reason of responsibility that we seek to understand and internalize better. However, these secrets come from God truthfully and only He can give them. So your positioning is what gives you access to them. Such is how it’s been. The benzene ring structure was revealed to Kekule so. In the same way, Isaac Newton comprehended the laws of physics that we came to newtons laws. The same way Einstein and Nikola Tesla Came across the secrets of the universe. It almost seems by mistake and coincidental that these men landed on these things. Science sometimes credits these discoveries to their IQ, but there’s more to it than that, otherwise, all people with the same or higher IQs would be making similar groundbreaking discoveries but it is not so, why?
The hidden nature of how these answers/solutions or secrets of the universe come to men/entrepreneurs has caused very many men to miss these secrets even when they we’re very close. And it’s only those that have mastered the pattern that have access to both the secrets and how they come.
So is it useless to spend sleepless nights awake when someone else can get the answer you’re awake for in their sleep or in a dream? No. Contrary to that, you’d be building a disciplined spirit and a character of a seeker that the worlds will start responding to you differently, and once in a while you’ll see gold nuggets thrown your side when you least expect it, or you’ll come across a trove of treasure ( stashed up) that will then belong to you.
In all these I’ve realized that the race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned, but time and chance happen to them all. (Time and chance here being Opportunity and a Personal Experience respectively)
This seems unfair but guess; what that’s the world and that’s just how it works. Moreover, of all these men, no one knows when their hour will come: so it’s best you live a patterned life lest you move like a blind man.
“In vain you rise early and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat —
for he grants sleep to those he loves.”
- the Psalmist
