Compare your stated priorities to your expenditures and how you spend your time, if they don’t align take steps to remedy the disconnect.
How You Spend Your Time and Money Reveals Your Priorities
Your time and how you spend it is the critical resource when you start bootstrapping. Your time arrives one hour at a time, departs 60 minutes later, and cannot be stockpiled. Filled with earnest purpose, I make plans and set objectives that must become actions to achieve the outcomes I need. In the words of Peter Drucker, “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”
I keep a “Do It Done” list that tracks my key tasks for the day and how much time they took. I log other hygiene factors like weight, meditation, bedtime, and when I started working. When these start to get out of kilter, I know I need to bring myself back into balance. I also set two to three key goals as priorities for the week, the month, and the quarter. I will often carry items over from the prior day, but if I do that too often, I will cross it off with a “d” for drop or ensure I finish it.
I use my calendar to block out times for meetings with clients, preparation for those meetings, and rehearsals for presentations. Most of the notes I take in meetings with clients I share as part of a Google Doc that they can also see and edit. Much of our work involves collaborating on presentations, datasheets, emails, and proposals in a Google Doc.
It’s better to be 80% complete and available immediately than to let things sit. For face-to-face Bootstrappers Breakfast, I take notes on index (3×5 inch) cards and normally publish the notes that are generally applicable within a day or two.
Helping clients with market exploration and sales calls takes patience; it’s not always clear why their prospects don’t understand, believe, or act on offers. Progress is often non-linear: many things we try don’t work, and then a sudden insight, often triggered by a remark in a conversation, allows for a knight move that jumps over a current obstacle.
Several people on our team have “attention surplus disorder.” They make a plan for the day and follow through. I can “slip the leash” easily and chase various bright and shiny objects in the short term. Timeboxing can help if I am stuck; I set a timer for 20-30 minutes and force myself to work on one item. Timeboxing can remove much of my inertia on tasks I have been putting off. While I am less accurate day to day, I can normally hit monthly and quarterly goals.
I try and keep in mind Stephen Bungay’s distinction between plans, action, and outcomes from his “Art of Action.” You can make plans, follow through–or fail to follow through–with actions, and learn that the actions did not lead to the outcomes you anticipated. Actions are under your direct control and worth keeping close track of. Comparing outcomes to plans allows you to improve.
Any time you try new methods or use new tools, you have to budget for the learning curve and schedule after-actions or periodic assessments of how the plan and the time required for the actions line up with the outcomes.
Tom Peters: You are Your Calendar
Brand You: You Are Your Calendar (PDF)
You. Are. Your. Calendar. You’re a leader, you’re a boss, or for that matter, you’re not a
leader or a boss. There is only one asset that I have and there is only one asset that you
have, and that asset is your time.You’re the boss of a distribution center and you say that this is going to be the year of
extraordinary attention to quality. And then at the end of the first month of the year or the
first month after you make this proclamation, I sit down with you for half an hour and we
go through your monthly calendar day by day and, in fact, hour by hour. And what we
discover is that with all the meetings that occur and all the surprises that come up, in the
course of that month, you spent six hours directly on the quality issue. Well, guess what?
Quality is not your top priority.The calendar never, ever, ever lies. If you say something is a priority, then it must be
quantitatively reflected obviously, dramatically, and unequivocally in the way you spend
your time. The calendar never lies. […]Time: Management of it and matching it up with your priorities. The calendar never lies.
Anything else lies. The calendar tells the truth!Tom Peters “You Are Your Calendar“
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