Reserving Time for Flow While Running a Startup
I went full-time on Draft.dev last year, and things have been growing and changing rapidly ever since.
At first, it was just me and a couple clients, so I blocked off some days to be "deep work" days and others to be sales days.
In December, I started hiring more regular contract employees and my calendar started to switch from maker to manager.
After re-reading The Four Hour Workweek this month, I realized that I need to extract myself from more of the day-to-day and get some of my focus time back.
How I Reserve Flow Time as a Founder
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I limit use of email and slack. I've set my team up in a way that they can make most small day to day decisions on their own. If I need to be involved, they can send me an email and I'll get back to them within 24 hours. We don't use Slack or real-time communication tools.
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I block off time for meetings and time for focus. Blocking my time prevents meetings from filling every day all day. I still do a lot of sales calls with customers, but I force them to work into my availability rather than make myself 100% available. Long-term, I'd like to hire a senior sales person to fill in the gaps, but we're not quite there yet.
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I track my time. My goal is to "work" less than 30 hours per week in the business. The remaining "non-work" time is often when I get a lot of thinking and higher-level processing time in, so while I'm not doing activities related to work I'm basically always thinking about it.
A lot of young founders assume that your job as a founder is to work the hardest and longest, but I've noticed that more experienced founders tend to work less and instead use the leverage they have through their experience and networks to add value.
If you're starting your own company and you value focus time, it is possible to preserve it, but you have to be intentional.
@karlhughes giving ownership to your team is really great! I do the same thing for my agency team as well. It's so good for both, the founder and the team (in fact I've seen that my team actually performs more effectively without those decision restrictions)
When you started out initially without a team (I'm assuming), you must've worked many more hours than 30 right? What would you suggest to someone who is just starting out and doesn't have the resources to hire or delegate anyone?
QQ for you - Since you've read the four hour work week, what is your opinion about it? I've heard some people saying that it's scammy and doesn't apply in real life. Would love to hear your opinion too!
Thanks!
I didn't work much more than 40 even at the beginning, but I had a huge advantage when I started. My personal network was really strong and I had been writing on the side for 8 years, so I didn't have to sell very hard. Once I had a few clients, it was relatively easy to get referrals based on doing good work for them. Then, I slowly started replacing myself with other writers.
Re: 4HRWW:
The tactical stuff is largely outdated and made to see way too easy. Dropshipping and affiliate sites (the standard "passive income" strategies he outlines) are a totally different beast now.
That said, the philosophical bits at the beginning and end, and the ideas of outsourcing and batching are still as relevant as ever. I think it's still worth reading as it outlines the ethos that many of us in the Indie Hacker community share (freedom, financial independence, location independence, etc.), but you can skip over a lot of the step-by-step stuff in the middle.
Ahh that's a good journey. Yeah personal network played a huge role in my journey too actually.
Thanks for the review too! I'll definitely give it read then.