Time Tracking That Contours to You

“Never confuse activity with achievement.” – John Wooden

Has it every been more challenging to get work done than it is today?  It’s quite ironic that, as fortunate as we are to have all of the technological innovations we enjoy today, these “productivity boosters” can be too much of a good thing.

Sometime late last year, I found myself really looking forward to a free weekend where I had nothing planned – which would allow me to get “a lot of work done”.  So starting Saturday morning, I plowed away at my “to do” list.  Same thing on Sunday.  I knocked off more things than I would have during a normal work week, and in only two days.

These weekend work sessions have become a real boon to my productivity.  And many people I’ve discussed this with have shared my experience.

“Absolutely, I can’t get anything done during the week, there are just too many interruptions,” they’ll say.

But recently I got to thinking – wait, there’s something really wrong with this picture.

First off – I love what I do.  I’m building my own company, I’ve gotten to choose everyone I work with – so absolutely no complaints.  BUT – is it healthy to work for consecutive weeks on end, without breaking away.

I don’t think so.  Hard work is great, and absolutely required for entrepreneurs.  But often our best ideas will come when we least expect it – when our mind is free to relax and drift.  This can’t happen if we work 24/7/365 – we just never get the opportunity.

So recently, I’ve started devising a system that would help optimize my personal/business productivity, AND bring a little more balance to my life.

I started by immersing myself in many of the time management and productivity methodologies out there – and there are no shortage of them.

I actually have traditionally avoided these, because, well, I fancied myself as being relatively productive.

So here’s an overview of a hybrid system I’ve developed.  One thing I learned is that, as an entrepreneur, my playbook is always changing.  So I need to develop a very flexible system – beyond just optimal efficiency.  Sure, it’s great if I get a lot done, but if it’s not the right stuff, who really cares anyway.

The three principles I’ve been successfully incorporating:

1. Always be prioritizing – most things don’t actually matter.

Classic 80/20 rule – 20% of the things you do will provide 80% of the value.  If you have 10 things on your “to do” list, the top 2 are much more valuable than the next 8 combined.

I’d encourage you to chew on this concept a bit – it’s simple, yet very powerful.  I try to reprioritize my top items on a weekly basis (this is a better use of weekend work time).  I’ve found that many of the “next 8” are no longer important anymore.

2. Don’t get too busy – fake it if you feel guilty.

Resist the urge to fill up your day with meetings, phone calls, and items that you need to get done.  I constantly ask myself: “What’s the worst that will happen if I don’t have this meeting?  If I don’t get this done?”  If it’s not that bad, axe it.

Sure, it feels great to be busy, and to “get a lot done.”  But I think as an entrepreneur, this is a trap.

If I look back at all the time I’ve invested in Chrometa since we founded it, most of the things I’ve done haven’t mattered at all in the long run. I’ll bet just 5% of my efforts have yielded 80% or more of our benefits.

Since I realized this, I’ve tried to sit back and think that if I only had one hour to work today, what would I do?  That usually helps push a sales/marketing activity to the forefront.  It’s never administrative work, that’s for sure.

And if you want to project a busy façade for the rest of the world to see?  Go for it – nobody’s going to know you’re not really that busy.  Heck, Ben Franklin used to run through the streets of Philadelphia carry reams of paper by hand back to his printing shop.  It was all for show – because not only did Franklin value hard work, but he also valued the appearance of hard work.

3. If it has to be done, then just focus and do it.

The old weekend phenomena revisited.  On weekends, with no incoming distractions, I can just focus in and knock something off.  Weekdays it’s been a challenge – emails, instant messages, phone calls, clicking over to the web (what’s the DOW doing today?).

So here’s how I am trying to emulate the weekend experience, during the week:

1. Practice time boxing for the items that I need to do – specifically, what is it, and how long will it take.  The list is a manageable size for the day, thanks to the vetting system we’ve discussed.  Never more than 5-6 “to do” items for a given day, and preferably even less.
2. Just do them – minimize interruptions until it’s done.  If it’s a long task, break it up into sub-items.  I’ve been quite amazed that even the most daunting task can often be knocked off in 60 minutes or less – provided the focus is there.
3. See how long it took.  This is something I use our time management software for, and it’s quite helpful.  I can see what time I started something, what time I finished, and how long it took.  Interruptions are also there.  Since I know I’m “on the clock”, and will be graded afterwards, I’ve been on my best behavior.

In sum, I’ve found that the key to my personal productivity is exactly what small business and time management guru Brian Tracy has been preaching for years – focus on just one thing at a time, your most valuable activity, and don’t stop until it’s completed.

Further Reading: The First Rule of Productivity: One Thing at a Time

My good friend Adam Kalsey – Founder of many successful enterprises, including IMified (acquired last year by Voxeo) and SacStarts (Sacramento’s Startup Network) – dishes out some refreshing advice for new entrepreneurs over at the SacStarts blog:

I talk to a great many erstwhile entrepreneurs that tell me all about their ideas and all the things that they’re going to do when they start their company. Or people who have started but aren’t really getting anything done because they can’t find the right co-founder or they need to design every last detail first, or they don’t have the marketing copy for their web site quite right yet.

Entrepreneurs do. We take an idea and a market and drive to make it happen. Figure out what’s standing in the way of you getting stuff done and just go through it. Once you’re actually building your company, a lot of those things that looked insurmountable turn out to be no problem at all.

These are two paragraphs that any aspiring entrepreneur should read over and over again – this is the essence of why so many wannabe companies never get off the ground.  And why so many wannabe entrepreneurs are forever waiting for the stars to align for them to go whole hog after their vision.

Here’s an unfortunate fact of life: The stars will never align.  So if you’re waiting around for a few things to “fall into place”, you’re wasting time.  Just get started and get after it.

As Adam mentions, most problems you’re planning for right now will never come to fruition.  At least 95% of your planning time and energy is likely being wasted.

On the flip side, there are obstacles that you’ll never anticipate until you start off on your journey.  That’s OK – you’ll deal with them as they come.

The important thing is to “fail fast” – if something is not working, stop doing it, and start doing more things that are working.

But – what if nothing is working at all?  That’s OK too – actually it’s completely normal, especially for a startup.  See, you don’t have to be that far off for it to feel like nothing is lining up.

If I may, let me use Chrometa as an example.  One year ago at this time, we had very little working.  Our messaging and value proposition was not connecting with the market – people would go to our website, and wonder what the heck we (and our product) did.  Not good.

Our product itself was a little better.  It had evolved to the stage where trial and beta users would say “I can see where this is going.”

So we kept tweaking everything – our focus, the product itself, our messaging, etc.  It can be a maddening process, quite honestly, because you can make a lot of incremental improvements, and have nothing to show for it.

“How’s the startup going?” is a question people love to ask.  And it’s a question a pre-revenue company usually hates to answer!  Because it’s tough to say things are going well when you don’t yet have a product that people will gladly pay for.

But eventually, it came together for us.  We defined who we were.  We kept honing the product (and continue to do so).  And eventually things started to click.

Moral of the story – inaction is the enemy of the entrepreneur.  Get moving today.  You’ll figure out what works, what doesn’t (that’ll be a real long list initially), and most importantly, you’ll be able to go from there and start building something of real value.