How can I identify the most impactful tasks for my startup?

The most impactful tasks usually involve talking to users to understand their needs, gather feedback, and convert them into customers, or building and iterating on your product based on that feedback. These activities directly contribute to increasing revenue or active users.

What is the journaling experiment to assess task value?

The experiment involves journaling your activities hour-by-hour for a past week, honestly assessing the predicted impact on your primary KPI before doing the task and comparing it to the actual impact. This helps reveal how much low-value work might be creeping into your schedule.

How should I grade the impact of my startup tasks?

Tasks can be graded as high, medium, or low impact. High impact means you believe it will help meet your weekly goal with high probability, medium with okay probability, and low with very low probability. This helps in comparing and prioritizing tasks relative to each other.

What is the best combination of impact and complexity for task prioritization?

The optimal approach is to prioritize tasks that combine high impact with low complexity ('high-easy' combos) first. Following that, tackle 'high impact, medium complexity' tasks. Avoid tasks that have low impact and high complexity.

How can I tell if I'm prioritizing my time well?

The ultimate measure is consistently hitting your weekly goals. If your key performance indicator graphs are consistently increasing, you are prioritizing well. Regularly reviewing your weekly updates and comparing predicted vs. actual impact can also indicate success.

What is the Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule and how does it help?

The Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule, popularized by Paul Graham, suggests dedicating large, uninterrupted blocks of time to specific types of tasks (like coding or talking to users) to minimize context-switching costs. This helps in completing tasks more efficiently, especially for solo founders.

Why is moving fast important for a startup?

Moving fast is crucial in the early stages to quickly prove that you're building something people want. This allows you to either find product-market fit confidently or pivot effectively. Making decisions quickly, even if sometimes wrong, is better than being indecisive and wasting time on low-value activities.

Key Moments

Adora Cheung - How to Prioritize Your Time

Y Combinator

Science & Technology5 min read17 min video

Sep 13, 2019|157,861 views|3,496|67

YC Y Combinator Startup School

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Key Moments

TL;DR

Founders often mistake activity for progress, focusing on fake tasks instead of directly growing their primary KPI. Prioritize 'high-impact, easy' tasks first and consistently track progress through weekly updates to avoid wasted time.

Key Insights

Real startup progress is defined by direct movement of your primary Key Performance Indicator (KPI), usually revenue or active users.

Fake startup progress includes activities like attending conferences, winning awards, or optimizing vanity metrics, which are several steps removed from customer value.

A structured approach involves logging all ideas in a spreadsheet, grading them by 'high' (high probability of meeting weekly goal), 'medium', and 'low' impact.

Tasks should also be assessed by complexity: 'easy' (under a day), 'medium' (1-2 days), and 'hard' (many days), allowing for prioritization based on 'high-impact, easy' tasks first.

Consistency in achieving weekly goals is the ultimate measure of effective prioritization; if goals falter, it signals a need to re-evaluate task selection.

The 'maker-manager schedule' concept, or dedicating blocks of time for high-context activities like coding or user talks, can significantly reduce time-wasting.

Distinguishing real from fake startup progress

Adora Cheung emphasizes that time is a startup's most precious resource, directly impacting its survival and success. She distinguishes between 'real' and 'fake' startup progress, asserting that founders must focus on activities that directly move the needle on their primary Key Performance Indicator (KPI), which is typically revenue or active users. Real progress involves tasks that increase this KPI, primarily through talking to users and building/iterating the product. In contrast, 'fake' progress stems from activities like attending conferences, pursuing awards, or networking events, which, while seemingly productive, are many steps removed from delivering customer value and growing the core metrics. Founders often get caught in the trap of optimizing for vanity rather than genuine impact, leading to wasted time and resources that could have been directed towards actual growth.

The value of journaling and honest assessment

To combat the tendency towards low-value work or autopilot execution, Cheung suggests a detailed hour-by-hour journaling of activities over the past week. This exercise, when done with brutal honesty about the perceived impact on the primary KPI before and after the task, often reveals a surprising amount of low-value work. This isn't attributed to laziness, but rather to human nature's preference for easy, quick wins that satisfy the desire to check items off a list. Awareness is the first step, and with discipline, founders can begin to consciously direct their efforts towards more impactful tasks. The key takeaway is that perceived busyness doesn't equate to effective progress.

Creating a prioritized task spreadsheet

Cheung advises founders to maintain a spreadsheet of potential tasks that can move their primary KPI. These tasks almost invariably fall into two categories: talking to users and building product. Talking to users helps in converting leads to customers, validating the product direction, and shaping the product roadmap. Building product delivers solutions and allows for testing whether they translate into increased customers and revenue. When an idea arises, it should be logged into this spreadsheet without immediate execution, to prevent the 'whiplash' of constantly switching focus to the latest, seemingly best idea. This structured approach ensures that all potential high-impact tasks are captured and can be systematically evaluated.

Grading tasks by impact and complexity

Once tasks are logged, they need to be graded on two dimensions: impact and complexity. Impact is rated as 'high,' 'medium,' or 'low,' based on the probability of the task helping to meet the weekly overarching goal for the primary KPI. Complexity is categorized as 'easy' (completable in less than a day), 'medium' (1-2 days), or 'hard' (many days, possibly not completable within the week). The prioritization strategy then becomes clear: start with 'high-impact, easy' tasks first, followed by 'high-impact, medium' complexity tasks. Tasks with low impact and high complexity should be avoided entirely. This two-dimensional grading system provides a robust framework for making objective, data-driven decisions about what to work on next.

Measuring success through consistent weekly goals

The ultimate indicator of effective time prioritization is the consistent achievement of weekly goals. Cheung contrasts graphs showing steady growth with those showing stagnation or decline, highlighting that falling short indicates a problem with task selection or execution. Startup School's weekly update system is presented as a vital tool for this ongoing evaluation. These updates should detail the weekly goal, whether it was met, the primary blockers to growth, actions taken, their predicted versus actual impact, and key learnings. Regularly reviewing these updates over time helps founders identify patterns, assess their ability to predict task impact, and prevent low-value work or stagnation from creeping into their startup's trajectory.

Optimizing schedules with focused work blocks

If founders consistently find themselves running out of time, Cheung suggests two solutions: breaking down overly complex tasks or rejiggering their schedule. She advocates for a modified 'maker-manager schedule,' emphasizing the high context-switching costs associated with tasks like coding and user conversations. Instead of fragmenting the day, founders should create dedicated blocks of time for different types of work. This could mean devoting an entire day to coding and another to meetings and user talks, or splitting days in half, ensuring continuous focus. This is particularly critical for solo founders who lack the ability to delegate and must optimize their personal workflow for maximum output and minimal disruption.

The imperative of moving fast and learning

Cheung concludes by stressing the importance of speed in the early stages of a startup. The primary objective is to quickly validate whether people want what you're building. Making thoughtful, yet rapid, decisions is key; time is often wasted in indecisiveness. It is better to choose a task that turns out to be wrong but be quick to learn from the mistake and pivot, than to spend excessive time deliberating over the 'perfect' task and remain idle. An agile approach to task selection and execution, coupled with a commitment to learning from each action, accelerates the path to product-market fit and scalable growth.

Mentioned in This Episode

●People Referenced

Startup Prioritization Cheat Sheet

Practical takeaways from this episode

Do This

Focus on tasks that directly impact your primary KPI (revenue or active users).

Prioritize talking to users and building/iterating your product.

Log ideas in a spreadsheet but don't act on them immediately.

Assign impact grades (high, medium, low) to tasks.

Consider task complexity (easy, medium, hard) alongside impact.

Always tackle 'high impact, easy' tasks first, followed by 'high impact, medium'.

Write honest weekly updates detailing goals, progress, blockers, and learnings.

Review past weekly updates to identify patterns and areas for improvement.

Break down overly complex tasks into smaller, manageable ones.

Rejigger your schedule to group similar tasks (e.g., dedicated coding blocks, meeting blocks).

Move fast, make decisions quickly, and be willing to learn from wrong choices.

Avoid This

Engage in tasks that contribute to 'fake startup progress' (e.g., attending conferences, winning awards, optimizing wrong metrics).

Switch focus constantly to newly generated ideas.

Focus on tasks with low probability of achieving your weekly goal coupled with high complexity.

Try to do too many things at once, leading to incomplete tasks and lack of conviction.

Get stuck in a loop of doing the same thing repeatedly without learning.

Waste time on indecisiveness; accept making wrong choices and learning quickly.

Task Prioritization Matrix: Impact vs. Complexity

Data extracted from this episode

Impact Level	Complexity Level	Priority Guidance
High	Easy	Do First
High	Medium	Do Second
High	Hard	Consider carefully, may require breaking down
Medium	Easy	Do after High-Impact tasks
Medium	Medium	Do after High-Impact tasks
Medium	Hard	Lower priority
Low	Easy	Lowest priority, consider only if time permits
Low	Medium	Lowest priority
Low	Hard	Avoid entirely

Common Questions

Real startup progress directly moves the needle on your primary KPI, typically revenue or active users, and involves core activities like talking to users and building the product. Fake progress includes activities like attending conferences, focusing on awards, or optimizing vanity metrics that are indirectly related to customer value and KPI growth.