Can I be vulnerable here for a minute?
The older I get and the more responsibilities that naturally accrue, the harder it is to keep up.
If I want to spend time hanging out with my son, that comes out of work time. If I want to workout, that comes out of family time. If I want to see friends, that comes out of sleep time. I can't do them all every day, so I feel like I'm constantly balancing these competing factors for an ever-shrinking portion of available time.
Time allocation is one of the most important decisions a leader can make. As Andy Grove says in High Output Management:
“A great deal of a manager’s work has to do with allocating resources: manpower, money, and capital, but the single most important resource that we allocate from one day to the next is our own time.”
This is part of what inspired my latest post for the Status Hero blog about making time to act deliberately. As a leader, you can't only put out fires every day—you also have to set aside time for strategic planning and long-term prioritization.
Balancing the two (short-term and long-term priorities) is probably the stickiest part of leadership. I know it's the thing I've struggled with the most while building my business.
How about you? How do you manage the pull of competing priorities? Any tips or rules of thumb I can borrow?
Sponsor
Technical Content for Software Startups
Draft.dev creates blog posts and tutorials designed to reach software engineers. Stop begging your engineers to write and start producing more content today!
Business
Making Time To Act Deliberately
"Great leaders aren’t the ones who do more; they’re the ones who know how to prioritize best."
Common Mistakes Startup Founders Make During Growth
Founders who are used to doing everything themselves don’t realize that more growth means more hiring, which means higher costs. Sometimes, a small business’s costs may rise non-linearly with growth and that's a big problem.
Technology
Next.js vs. Gatsby
When deciding between Gatsby and Next, how do you determine which framework is best? Let’s explore the key differences between the two. We’ll end with some questions to ask yourself to make the best choice.
How writing can advance your career as a developer
"In their first few years on the job, engineers spend roughly 30% of their workday writing, while engineers in middle management write for 50% to 70% of their day; those in senior management reportedly spend over 70% and as much as 95% of their day writing."
Leadership
Why Don’t Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?
"When hiring someone new, companies are forced to play in the open market, competing for top talent. But internally, they create opaque and informationally asymmetric compensation structures designed to minimize growth for existing employees to save the company’s bottom line."
Your Idea Is Brilliant, Your Idea Is Worthless
"Ideas are important. Your idea is important. It may even be brilliant...don’t stop generating ideas. Daydream about them. Share them with other people. Write them down. Your idea is brilliant. But…Your Idea Is Worthless. An idea only has value when it is executed, and it only has a lot of value when it’s executed well."