The Entrepreneur Life

Tag: Time management

Startup Founder Secret #2

StopwatchOne of the challenges in getting advice – even when we agree with it – is figuring out how in the heck are we going to find time to follow it. As an entrepreneur or founder, you’ve got enough and more on your plate – so while it’s great to hear you should meditate, how do you squeeze it into your insane calendar (you do have one don’t you?)

This is a secret that I learned from Stephanie Winston, organizing guru from her book The Organized Executive.  In three words it is

Meetings with yourself

Notice, when you have a meeting with a customer or prospect, a candidate you are trying to hire (or in some cases when a critical person is threatening to leave) you drop everything else to take that meeting. Look around you – your day is probably filled with meetings – product reviews, vendor negotiations. In fact if your day is anything like a typical founder’s day – meetings are the only thing that seem non-negotiable and you have to fit in your other tasks in to little time chunks between meetings. So rather than let this get you down, start by marking meetings on your calendar, with just one attendee – YOU!

This is a great way to get that blog post written, contract reviewed or to even meditate. It most importantly prevents you from using this time to take other meetings. So start now, and mark your calendar up for the next two weeks – or if you want to be bolder for two months – with a daily 20 minute meeting with yourself to meditate, or twice weekly to blog or fortnightly for date night with your significant other. Let me know how it works.


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“This week” – the secret to managing your time well

 

“Honey, can you make the insurance payment? ” my wife would ask me.

“Sure dear, I’ll take care of it,” I’d respond.

Early in our marriage there were often fireworks due to such seemingly innocuous conversations between my wife and I. It took me a while to figure that my wife meant, “Can you get the insurance paid NOW!” And it galled her no end, that my response meant, that I’d get it done one of these days.

Fortunately for us, we arrived at a compromise that all such conversations, especially ones where I needed to get something done, meant I’ll get it done that WEEK! Twenty years on, we are still on talking terms largely due to this one agreement.

Each year, as I work on new projects and often with new team members, I learn a thing or two about managing my time better – even if it’s only what not to do. From my early Franklin planning days of the early ‘80s through the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People all the way through Getting Things Done and Wunderlist, I’ve tried my share of tools and methods to be more productive and get more of the right stuff done in less time. Truth is that it’s still a work in progress and I continue to struggle with procrastination.

As the parent of two teen girls, child of an aging, recently widowed parent, as a slightly overweight middle-aged man trying to get in shape, the operational head of a non-profit and spouse of a professional musician, my to-do list is overflowing. Even when it’s incomplete.Enhanced by Zemanta

If you are like me, your to-do lists are ambitious – maybe more hopeful than practical. The very act of opening them is daunting. But we still put too much for a day on ‘em. It finally dawned on me to apply the lesson I’ve learned in making commitments to my wife. Seek balance over a week – and not try the impossible of trying to achieve it each day.

Plan your to-do list for a week. Yep – not just for the day. The reality is some days you’re going to get only one thing done, if that. On other days you’re going to be on fire. By keeping your to-do horizon to be a week, rather than the day—things will be a whole lot less stressful. Sure the first week you’ll over commit, but very soon you’ll get the knack of it.

Now say after me, “I’ll get it done sometime this week!” 

© 2024 K Srikrishna

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