How to prioritize your tasks as Startup Founders : As founders, we always have several things we need to get done. Ranging from the product or service you are building to the customer requests, compliances, hiring, and whatnot. These tactics help you prioritize your tasks...

‍

How to priorities your tasks as Startup Founders 

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." ~ Proverb

‍

As founders we always have several things we need to get done. Ranging from the product or service you are building to the customer requests, compliances, hiring and what not. These tactics help you prioritize your tasks, so you focus on what’s most important for your Startup right now. 

‍

An effective way is to delegate most of these to specific team members who can do these tasks to help you create more time to focus on what matters the most for you as a founder. 

At the end you are left with a number of tasks for yourself which you need to take care of. When you have this list, how do you decide which one of these is important & which one needs most of your attention first? 

Well, this is where the advice from Adora Cheung, a YC Partner, comes handy. In her video she has detailed what you as a founder should focus on & shares a small template that can be followed to ensure you are focusing most of your efforts on what matters the most for your Startup. (You can watch it here.)

This blog is an effort to break down Adora's advice in easy-to-understand bullet points along with a ready to use template to start managing your tasks more efficiently. 

So, let's dive in. 

Create a weekly goal

• First, it's important to have a primary matric that you follow on weekly basis to measure the growth of your Startup. 
• In most cases it could be either revenue or active users. 
• Once you have identified your primary matrix, break it down into tasks that can help you reach your goals this week. 
• Be aware of Fake Tasks

A quick note on Real vs Fake Tasks 

Real tasks help you move the needle & get you closer to your weekly goals. Such as talking to customers & building or improving your product to better serve your customers. 

Fake tasks are tasks that gives you a false sense of completion but doesn't really add any value toward your weekly goal such as attending networking events, conferences, pitch competitions or running behind awards. They don't add any real value to your offering or to your customers so try to avoid them. 

- When your weekly task list is ready, follow this framework to prioritize what you should do first 

- Update Impact of the task  ‍

• High - High priority of achieving your weekly goals  
• Medium- May or may not help achieve the weekly goals, you are not sure yet but worth trying  
• Low - Low priority of achieving your weekly goals with these tasks 

- Update the Effort of the task 

• Low- easy to do. You can do it in a few hours. 
• Medium - May take a couple of days to complete 
• Hard - Will take long, sometimes more than a week so chances are that you will not be able to complete them within the week 

- That's all. Your weekly task planning is now done. Simply reorder them in following order 

• High Impact - Low effort 
• High Impact - Medium effort 
• Medium Impact - Low effort 
• Medium Impact - Medium Effort 
• Ditch everything else as they are either not adding a lot of value or will take high efforts to complete before you see any results. 

That's all. You have your high efficiency super simple To Do list ready that can help you move the needle to achieve your weekly goals. Keep doing this week after week, keep retrospecting to keep the process efficient & keep making weekly notes on what you learned & what worked & what didn't. 

With a disciplined effort you will soon start seeing better results. 

We have created a Founder's To Do template under Startup category in Anywhere to help you manage your weekly goals & tasks efficiently. Get it here. 

Why use Anywhere template when you can do this in excel sheet? 

A few benefits:

• If you have a team, Anywhere makes it easy to delegate the tasks to other team members a breeze. 
• You can keep a check on your progress in the Dashboard 
• You can automate the repetitive processes 
• You can create an email automation to receive a daily reminder of your daily tasks to keep you on track 
• You can invite & share your To Do list with other Founders in your team to create a collaborative space for your team 

‍

Start using the Founder's To Do template to move the needle for your Startup today. Try it here.