To be truly successful, you have to take time off.

Starting a business is a little like having a baby: at the beginning, your life revolves around figuring out how to help it survive. Everything else–family, friends, health, hobbies, even sleep–takes second place. For first-timeentrepreneurs with no previous practice in raising a business to maturity, the experience can be even more overwhelming. They can be so passionate about the company that they can’t bear to step away for a moment–or so terrified about financial doom that they don’t dare to. And that’s where they get in trouble.

Most people start a company because they want more control over their time and life, not less, but let’s not kid ourselves. Your new baby of a business really does need more or less undivided attention for a while. The magic words in that sentence, though, are “for a while.” Time is a finite resource, and the amount of time needed to launch a start-up isn’t sustainable long-term, says Paula Caligiuri, Ph.D., director of the Center for Human Resource Strategy at Rutgers University.

“We’re pretty good at thinking about how to invest our money and at what point we’ll get a return on investment, but we don’t think the same way about time,” says Caligiuri, whose recent book Get a Life, Not a Job looks at how to find harmony between work and the rest of life. “Entrepreneurs often focus on getting to the point of profitability, and that’s where your attention needs to be at the onset. But once the business becomes viable, you have to think about how to enjoy the luxury of the freedom you should have been creating for yourself.”

Warren Hewerdine discovered just that in 2007 when he launched Navit Innovations to build sturdy, simple GPS units designed to get kids excited about geocaching, a sort of GPS-assisted outdoor treasure hunt. He soon found his own leisure time evaporating in what he calls the “race against the clock” to develop, fund, andmarket his Geomate product. “It’s easy to say you must have balance, but in the first six to 12 months, you almost have to cancel everything else so you can reach that magical point [where the business is] self-sustaining,” he says.

After six months, Hewerdine realized he’d been so deeply immersed in work that his motivation and attention were waning. In fact, he had forgotten to book a family trip that was an annual tradition. That’s when he decided to start taking “microbreaks”–a long lunch or an afternoon off–once every week or so.