Rafi Chowdhury never makes his bed. He never cleans his room and he never cooks. But, Chowdhury isn’t a slob and he doesn’t live in a mansion with dozens of servants.
He is the successful founder of the Internet startups Chowdhury’s Digital and Influencer Spotlight. At only 25-years old, he has achieved his success by eliminating all possible distractions. Instead of wasting time on regular household tasks, Chowdhury is meeting clients, contacting strategic partners, and working on his business.
How does he do it?
Chowdhury lives at a Motel 6 in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Extreme Focus
When it comes to extreme focus, Chowdhury isn’t alone. Many of the world’s most successful people have found that they have to put every available minute into their business to achieve their goals.
In order to free up the time and mental space they need to change the world, these entrepreneurs have intensely simple routines. They regularly eliminate activities from their lives that most think are essential.
The problem with the mundane things in life like choosing your clothes, cleaning your home, and making your food, is that they not only take up time, but they also prevent you from thinking about your business.
When your routine is too cluttered, you are wasting your time, your mental reserves, and your motivation.
Decision Fatigue
Running a successful business requires people to make a lot of critical decisions. But it is easy to get overwhelmed and to develop what psychologists call decision fatigue.
Decision fatigue is when you have spent so much mental energy making choices that you lose the ability to focus on important details. Mark Zuckerberg famously fights decision fatigue by wearing the same shirt every day. He’s not alone.
Former president Barak Obama and the now-deceased co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, also wore the same outfits every day to avoid wasting time and mental energy on something as mundane as what to wear.
British millionaire entrepreneur and investor Peter Jones simplifies his routine by having cereal every morning for breakfast. Jones is also a panelist on the British TV show Dragon’s Den, which is similar to the American show Shark Tank.
He never has to worry about what he will eat in the mornings. Instead, he can get the nutrition he needs and focus on his huge portfolio of investments and investment opportunities.
Simple Hotel Rooms
Rafi Chowdhury is not the only successful person who has found the simplicity of hotel rooms to be alluring. Poet, author, and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, Maya Angelou found it almost impossible to work at home. Instead, she would work in a hotel or motel room—only bringing with her a face basin, a dictionary, a bible, and a bottle of sherry.
She needed to be free of the mundane tasks and the environment of the house to do her best work.
For his part, Chowdhury has his own reasons for preferring to live and work in a motel. He regularly works 75 hours or more a week. He explains, “I rent a room in a motel because it’s inexpensive and convenient for me,”
“I don’t like to cook or clean and I can make a lot more money if I cut-out those types of distractions from my life anyway. Staying in a motel where all of these things are done for me is the perfect way for me to save more time,” he adds.
Chowdhury regularly uses the facilities at the Motel 6 to simplify his working life as well. He schedules meetings for the conference room to avoid wasting time on the road. He meets with potential clients and partners for breakfast or coffee in the motel lounge.
Because the motel is “all wired up” he can work from anywhere in the motel.
Chowdhury said, “I stayed for like, four months in Motel 6, and I was able to cut my living costs very easily. I was able to donate more than half of my stuff, and also understood how this helped me to grasp the human philosophy,”
It was during this time that Chowdhury and his partner Jeet Banerjee started another venture, Organic Allure. The simplified life choices also enabled Chowdhury to expand Chowdhury’s Digital.
While Chowdhury doesn’t advise everyone to forego a house and live in a Motel 6, it is clear that like other successful people, Chowdhury has been able to achieve results by intensely simplifying his daily routine.
His experience begs the question of every entrepreneur: how much more can I accomplish if I eliminated parts of my routine?
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