We talked to… I think it was the founder of Instacart said that you should raise money when you have momentum, not when you need money, and I think that’s very true. So realizing that cash is an asset, and that you need to start your fundraising process… People often say 18 months or 12 months before you’re out of cash. Turns out that was a mistake, because turns out when you don’t have money, nobody wants to give you any money, because they think you’re about to run out of money. Why would you raise money when you have money? You raise money when you don’t have money, because that’s when you need money. We timed our fundraising around when we would run out of money, which makes sense. Approach investors before you need the money, and you’ll be much more successful. Sam said you shouldn’t wait until the last minute to start fundraising. So really knowing what your priorities are and holding yourself accountable to solving those really important problems is probably the most important thing as it relates to time management. And I can tell you, having been on the other side of it, it’s not that bad, but it’s really hard to know that until you’re on the other side of it. One of them is on the tail end of failing, and he’s having a really hard time accepting that. And most companies fail, and that’s not fun. Doing the hard thing is hard, and that’s why most people don’t do it. Sam said it’s important to know what your priorities are and to hold yourself accountable to solving those truly important problems. I’m actually in the last day of my think week right now for this quarter. I actually do a think week once a quarter. But there’s another quote, something like, “There’s nothing more wasteful than working on something that should not have existed to begin with.” And so a lot of time, you can spend five or six hours working on a thing, but if you just spent one hour thinking about what you should actually be doing, you might not have had to spend that five hours on something that was completely wasteful. If I’m not working, I’m not moving things forward. It’s often easy to rationalize and to justify staying working. Don’t waste time on unnecessary tasks, and don’t be afraid to take a break when you need one. Sam said just because you’re working doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being productive. And I can tell you empirically, every study that has been done on this topic shows that nobody can multitask. They’ll even describe it as a skillset that they have. I meet a lot of people who think that they’re good on multitasking. Today, it’s basically just only meetings, because I’m happy to just jump from meeting to meeting, but going from one idea to another and jumping back and forth… It is funny. Yesterday, I had no calls or meetings the whole day, and I just wrote several memos and thought about a number of important company organizational design things. If I’m jumping from task to task, I’m not going to get anything done the whole day. So I think the most important thing when considering time, for me at least… This is maybe just a personality thing, but I found that I’m extremely sensitive to contact switching. I think the biggest one is to try to solve problems at a systems level more than anything.
You have to be mindful of how you spend your time. Be intentional with your scheduling and what you commit to. Sam said CEOs need to be mindful of how they spend their time.
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