Why I Keep a “What I Do” List Rather than a “To-Do” List
Wow- there’s like a gazillion different “to-do” list apps out there. Yet despite being as haphazard and scatterbrained as the next person, I don’t use any of them. (I can’t “buy in” to the idea that any one system or app can save me from myself and the various ways I remind myself of what I need to do next.)
But what I do keep is a “What I Do” list of sorts, and I don’t think many people in our space — founders or investors — approach time management in those preliminary terms: “What-I-do” as a foundation or prerequisite for contemplating the “to-do.”
Quick background — I started my career as a corporate lawyer, wanting to learn dealmaking as a practitioner before embarking on a dealmaking business career. What I hated most about being a lawyer was billing my hours — at our big NYC firm, like many others, we were told to bill in six-minute increments. “Call w/ client: 0.1 hours.” “Email communication with client: 0.1 hours.” Yuck. Like a ticking clock was hanging on the tie around my neck.
Then I joined my first software startup. Ditched the tie, and with it the ticking clock. And you know what I started to miss? Being accountable for my time. I’d pick my head up from my screen at 3:00 PM and say “What have I done so far today? How did add value?” And I couldn’t always immediately recall or answer. I could tell you I’d been working hard but couldn’t necessarily immediately tell you on what, or for how long.
So a few years ago I started to bill my time again. Not to any client or for any payment. Just to myself. I use an app called Harvest. I easily created areas of activity as if they were clients, and divided them into further subcategories underneath the the top-level primary functions. I can add and remove types of activity, download the data and generate pie-chart reports whenever I want. Since everything is on my phone and entered using pre-defined menus it literally takes me seconds as I go through a day to input my time spent on things like administering my fund, hearing pitches and reviewing possible new investments, networking, and the top-level category that I’m proud to say consumes most of my time — working inside the portfolio companies that I am actively helping to build.
(As an aside — one day I’m pitching an LP for my fund, and I must have said something about being “hands-on” with my companies. He stops me cold and says: “You know, I hear VCs say that all the time, and I think it’s B.S. How much time do you really spend inside your companies?” I calmly reached for my phone, hit the Harvest app icon, held it up and said: “Quarter to quarter, my time spent inside my portfolio companies ranges between 39% to 42% of my working hours.” Boo-yah.)
I don’t think there’s any activity I do that takes as little time (inputting my time spent into Harvest) and generates as much return in terms of self-awareness and self-management. I’ve relied on this data to modify my behavior and priorities as I progress and grow as an investor and entrepreneur.
Remember that as an entrepreneur, and even as an investor, typically nobody is regularly looking over your shoulder or managing your tasks for you. You will need to develop and hone your skills of self-management. You’ll need to learn important lessons about how you prioritize and spend you time without anybody knowing what time management decisions you’ve made and what results ensued. How are you supposed to learn the requisite lessons, and make those judgments and evaluations, if you don’t have the basic data about how you spend your time in the first place?
With all the ink spilled and code written to try to help us figure out what we need “to-do,” I offer my two cents, for what it’s worth, that we first need to understand what we are already doing. Capturing and analyzing that data is the first step.
