One lesson I keep relearning is that, instead of trying to do more in a day, doing less is the key to getting the results I want more quickly.
Now, as I’m starting a new company, my days over the past few weeks have filled up quickly with dozens of things that need attention. I felt a strong urge to push on all fronts to reach our goal as fast as possible. After all, for a pre-revenue company, it is a fight against time to survive.
What I’ve realized—painfully—is that I was spreading myself too thin across too many tasks. My desire to accomplish a lot every day left me not only feeling overwhelmed but also deeply frustrated by my lack of progress on the things that truly move the needle for us at this stage.
I don’t judge myself too harshly. We grow up observing people around us treat the hours they work and the sheer number of tasks they complete in a day as signals of progress, status, and accomplishment. But when you zoom out from the daily grind, it becomes clear that this heuristic is flawed.
As founders navigating the world with leverage—capital, media, code—the better way to reach our goals quickly is to focus on fewer things that carry more weight in pushing us toward our objectives.
The heuristic I’m using now is simple: I start each day by asking, “What is the one thing I can accomplish today that will make everything else easier in the future?” (or some derivative of that question).
This helps me eliminate the noise of countless possible tasks and identify the action that truly moves the needle.