Adora Cheung - How to Prioritize Your Time

TL;DR

Learn how to effectively prioritize tasks that contribute to real startup progress and focus on high-impact activities to achieve your weekly goals.

Transcript

hello as kevin said my name is adora i'm one of the partners at yc and i'm going to talk about how to prioritize time time as you know is precious especially when you're working on a startup time burns money and money is the very basic thing that keeps a startup alive not to be too philosophical about it but even if your personal burn is super low ... Read More

Key Insights

• 📊 Prioritize tasks that contribute to real startup progress (e.g. revenue or active users) and avoid tasks that are not directly related to growth.
• 📈 Set weekly goals for your primary Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to measure progress and focus on tasks that will move the needle for your startup.
• 💡 Keep a spreadsheet of ideas to increase your KPI, but prioritize tasks instead of jumping to new ideas right away. ⏰ Be aware of low-value work creeping into your schedule and journal your activities to identify and eliminate time spent on tasks with low impact on your KPI.
• 🔍 Regularly review your weekly updates and evaluate your progress, learning, and ability to predict the impact of your tasks.
• ✔️ Select tasks based on their impact and complexity, and prioritize high-impact and easy tasks to maximize your chances of meeting your goals.
• 📅 Consider a modified version of the "maker's manager schedule" to dedicate continuous chunks of time to different types of tasks (e.g. coding vs. meetings).
• ⚡️ Move fast, make decisions thoughtfully, and be okay with making wrong choices as long as you learn quickly and adjust your focus accordingly.

Questions & Answers

Q: How can founders distinguish between real and fake startup progress?

Distinguishing between real and fake startup progress is essential for effective prioritization. Real startup progress involves tasks that directly contribute to growth, such as talking to users and iterating product, while fake progress includes activities that are not directly related to growing your primary KPIs, like attending conferences or optimizing irrelevant metrics. By focusing on tasks that deliver value to customers and increase KPIs, founders can prioritize high-impact activities.

Q: How can founders determine if they are prioritizing the right tasks?

Sometimes, founders may unknowingly prioritize low-value work instead of high-value tasks. To determine if you're prioritizing the right tasks, try journaling in detail about your daily activities and their impact on your primary KPIs. By grading tasks based on their impact and complexity, you can prioritize high-impact, easy tasks that have a high probability of achieving your weekly goals. This exercise helps identify low-value work and ensures you stay focused on tasks with the greatest impact.

Q: Why is it important to evaluate the complexity of tasks alongside their impact?

Evaluating the complexity of tasks is crucial to prioritizing effectively. By categorizing tasks as easy, medium, or hard based on the effort required, founders can stack rank and prioritize tasks within each category. The key objective is to focus on high-impact, easy tasks that can be completed within a day. This ensures that you're not overwhelmed with too many tasks and can complete them with conviction, leading to tangible progress.

Q: How can founders ensure they are maximizing their time and hitting their goals consistently?

Consistently hitting your weekly goals is a clear indicator that you're prioritizing your time effectively. Weekly updates, where you document your goals, the biggest growth blockers, tasks, and their predicted and actual impacts, help you evaluate your progress. Reviewing these updates regularly helps identify patterns, assess if you're learning fast enough, and avoid getting stuck in repetitive tasks. Additionally, adopting a modified version of the maker's manager schedule and making decisions thoughtfully and quickly can help maximize time and progress.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Time is a valuable resource for startups and it's crucial to prioritize tasks that contribute to real startup progress.

• Real startup progress involves focusing on activities that directly impact your primary key performance indicators (KPIs), such as revenue or active users.

• Prioritizing tasks requires being aware of low-value work that can easily creep into your schedule and consistently evaluating the impact and complexity of each task.