Likes & Launch

You’ve been #hustling for the past year at your startup. Your team has doubled and doubled again. What was once ten people huddled in a makeshift office is now a group of fifty people collaborating to make this one idea into a ‘real company.’ 

Grind/Dream poster by Joey Roth.

You’ve never been more excited or more exhausted. You stop to look back at where you were a year ago and are shocked at how little you knew. You took on budget or human resources or design or mobile because someone had to do it. You stepped up to the plate and you did the best you could. You helped get the company where it is today. Although you probably don’t hear it as much as you’d like from your CEO, thank you. Thank you. You are a part of what got the company here today.

The high from looking how far you’ve come quickly wears off when you look back at your inbox. Messages about that upcoming deadline. More engineers coming on board but not enough budget to add more hires who aren’t building the core of the product. You’ve added two people to your team but you still feel like you’re absorbing every loose end. You are the person who took on every challenge before, so why should that change?

Yes, you’ve found yourself reading a blog post about employee burnout but then you catch yourself. Burnout is for other people. Burnout is for people who don’t sleep more than 4 hours a day. Hm, maybe you should read do a little research on how people get by with 4 hours of sleep, you could do that just for a little while, right?

NO! Less sleep is never (#hustle mindset: rarely) the answer. What you need help with is reprioritizing. You have too many things on your plate that you can no longer see what’s important. There is no way that you’re doing an excellent job at too many things. It’s impossible.

How do you prioritize when everything feels business critical? First, not everything is business critical, and if it is, then why aren’t any of the other 20-50 people on your team working on this? Everything is not business critical.

Take a deep breath. Say it with me now: “Everything is not business critical.” Repeat it until you believe it.

Now, how do you know what is business critical? Make a priority list by using three questions:

1. What am I working on?
2. What should I be working on?
3. What would I work on if I had more time?

What am I working on?

Over the course of the next two weeks document where you’re spending your time. A google doc or spreadsheet that includes the project, the numbers of hours you’re spending on it and the total number of hours you’re working a week will suffice.

With that data you should be able to answer what you are working on.

By looking at where your time is going you’ll get a sense of where you’ve been subconsciously prioritizing. Maybe there are opportunities to gain efficiencies with tools or outsourcing. Both of those are rarely free so make sure you’re adding efficiency to a priority first.

What should I be working on?

You’ve likely got an inbox full of requests, an angry list app or a running conversation with your manager or CEO on what you should be working on. Write these in a list, anything that comes to mind. Don’t edit yourself just to the things that you are working on, give yourself some piece of mind that you have all of the “to-dos” in one place.

Go specific, not broad.  It’s very easy to lump our to-do lists into broad buckets like “android development” or “social media”. Break that down into project pieces, what has to get done with each of those? Android development could be broken down into: (a) build a mock-up with the design team (b) decide on Phone gap vs. native © get feedback on product changes from the team. For social media, break it into (a) blog company news once a month (b) respond to customers on twitter daily © write social media guidelines.

What would I work on if I had more time?

You may need to step away from your laptop for this one. When you make this list, let your mind creep beyond what’s currently possible. Want to work on a data project segmenting user cohorts? Want to find ways to make onboarding new employees fun? Want to growth hack your app downloads?

List ideas of any size that have crossed your mind. You know the company better than anyone, what is possible? What would you say, “It’s about time!” if you saw someone else in the company building it? 

Take action

You now have three lists: what is happening, what should happen and what may eventually happen.

For each list, ask yourself “If only one thing got done, what would be the most important.” Circle one from each list. Rank the remaining items in each list in their order of importance.

You now have your perceived priority list. Now it’s time to validate your thoughts with the rest of your team. 

Set up time with your manager, CEO, leader, advisor or colleague and tell them: “I have a lot on my plate and I’m looking for help on prioritizing.”

Use the first few minutes to walk them through your thought process on the priority list. Ask them to take the time to rank the priorities too.

• Are there things from the ‘should happen’ list that should move to ‘what is happening’?
• Are there ideas on the ‘eventually happen’ list that could become possible in the coming months?
• Does the team need to adopt new tools or expand headcount to deliver on all of the priorities?

It may take a few conversations and iterations but you should have a firm list of the three things that are most important now. Any project that comes up will need to be compared against those priorities. If it doesn’t replace one of the three priorities, it’ll be added to the longer list.

It’s your responsibility to ensure that your #hustle is driving the bottom line, not just keeping you busy.

Ongoing maintenance

Your priorities will evolve over time so it’s worth revisiting your priorities with your team on a regular basis. You can also ensure progress by occasionally tracking your hours to make sure your time is being spent on top priorities.

The startup journey is incredibly exciting and only possible with early stage employees like you. Don’t wait until it’s too late to speak up. If you choose not to speak up about it, it’ll impact your team in the long run. People are what build companies, make sure you have a roadmap to your best work. 

Thank you to Kim, People Ops expert, for inspiring this post.