Unlock the keys to success with Adora Cheung's advice on how to prioritize your time and maximize your startup's chance for success.

Adora Cheung, a partner at Y Combinator, offers her advice on how to prioritize your time when working on a startup. She tackles the difficult task of allocating limited time to maximize the chance of success. Cheung outlines the distinction between real and fake startup progress, and explains how to identify and prioritize tasks that will be most impactful. She shares her method of journaling and grading tasks, and provides an example to demonstrate how to determine high and low value tasks.

Learning Outline

1. Understand the distinction between real and fake startup progress: Real startup progress involves focusing on things that will move the needle for your startup, such as growing your primary KPI. Fake startup progress is when you focus on things that are not directly related to growing your primary KPI.

2. Keep a spreadsheet of ideas that can move your primary KPI: Consider tasks that involve talking to users and building and iterating your product.

3. Grade each task on your list: Assign each task a grade of high, medium, or low based on how impactful you think the task would be on achieving the weekly goal for your primary KPI.

4. Journal in detail: Track each hour of your day in the past week and be honest about the impact of your tasks on increasing your primary KPI.

5. Avoid switching tasks too often: Switching to the thing you just thought of causes a ton of whiplash and can prevent progress.

Instructional Content

Time management is an essential skill for all entrepreneurs, and Adora Cheung’s video, “How to Prioritize Your Time”, provides valuable insight into how to maximize the use of time when running a startup. Cheung explains that time is a precious resource, especially for startups, and that it is important to identify and prioritize tasks that will have the most impactful on the startup’s progress. She emphasizes that the most important tasks to focus on are those that involve talking to users, building and iterating product, and growing the primary KPI. Cheung warns against focusing on “fake startup progress” like attending conferences and networking events, which are steps away from providing real value to the customer. To make sure you are prioritizing the right tasks, Cheung suggests journaling in detail each day of the past week and grading the tasks based on how impactful they will be on achieving the weekly goal for the primary KPI. By using Cheung’s advice, entrepreneurs can be sure they are using their time in the most effective way and achieving the most progress for their startups.

Productivity

Maximize Time Efficiency

Productivity is an essential skill for anyone looking to succeed in their work and life, and it’s especially important for entrepreneurs and startup founders. Without proper productivity skills, it can be hard to stay focused, prioritize tasks and make the most of your time.

Fortunately, Adora Cheung’s video and transcript provides an excellent guide to improving productivity. The video and transcript make a clear distinction between real and fake progress. Real progress is what moves the needle for the startup and should be prioritized, while fake progress is anything that doesn’t contribute to the primary key performance indicator (KPI). This can include things like attending conferences, winning awards, networking or optimizing the wrong metrics.

The video and transcript also recommend keeping a task list of ideas and activities that can lead to real progress. This list should be constantly updated and revisited, and tasks should be graded with a high, medium or low value. This helps to identify the most impactful tasks that should be prioritized.

In addition to Adora’s advice, there are a few other tips to help improve productivity. It’s important to set clear goals and objectives to stay focused and motivated. It’s also a good idea to break down tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks to make them easier to complete. Finally, it’s important to take regular breaks to stay energized and motivated.

By following Adora’s advice and keeping these tips in mind, learners can develop their productivity skills and make the most of their time. With productivity skills in place, learners can stay focused, prioritize tasks and make significant progress on their goals.

Time Management

How to Prioritize Time?

Time management is a key component of personal and professional success. With careful planning and strategic implementation, individuals can develop the skills needed to make the most of their time and maximize their productivity. Adora Cheung, a partner at Y Combinator, has shared some invaluable advice on how to prioritize your time.

Cheung emphasizes the importance of focusing on tasks that contribute to “real startup progress.” This means finding ways to grow your primary KPI, whether that’s revenue or active users. It’s essential to think critically about what tasks will have the biggest impact on your goals and eliminate any that aren’t necessary. Cheung also suggests journaling for an hour-by-hour look at how your time is spent. This can help identify low-value activities that are taking up too much of your time and prevent them from becoming part of your routine.

Using Cheung’s advice is a great way to make sure that your time is being put to good use. Studies show that time management can lead to improved work-life balance, increased job satisfaction, and even better mental and physical wellbeing. In addition, research shows that effective time management can lead to a more productive and successful career.

Adopting a time management system can be daunting, but it’s worth the effort. Take the time to assess your current daily routine, make adjustments, and find ways to make the most out of the time you have. Following Cheung’s advice is an excellent way to get started on the path to success.

Startup and Entrepreneurship

Can Entrepreneurs Prioritize?

Adora Cheung's video and transcript offers great guidance on how to prioritize your time when working on a startup. Most founders know time is a precious resource and, as Cheung explains, it directly impacts the success of their startup. But how can founders know which tasks are most important and will have the greatest impact on their business?

Cheung explains that the most important tasks are those that contribute to real startup progress, such as growing the primary KPI. To determine which tasks are going to help your business the most, it's important to make a distinction between real and fake startup progress. Real progress is when you're focused on things that move the needle for your startup, such as growing your primary KPI. Fake progress is when you focus on tasks that don't directly contribute to growing your primary KPI, such as attending conferences or optimizing the wrong metrics.

To ensure you're working on the right tasks, it's important to track every hour of every day and be honest with yourself about the impact of your tasks on your primary KPI. This may seem trivial, but it will help you identify which tasks you should focus on and which tasks to avoid. Additionally, it's important to keep a spreadsheet of ideas that can move the primary KPI and grade them based on how impactful they are on achieving the weekly goal.

By following Adora Cheung's advice, you can make the most of your time and ensure that your startup is on the path to success. Prioritizing your tasks correctly is key to making sure you're focused on the most important and valuable tasks for your business.

Organizing and Prioritizing

How to Organize Priorities?

Adora Cheung's video on how to prioritize your time is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to upskill themselves in personal growth and professional development. In her video, Adora explains that when working on a startup, time is a precious commodity and it is essential to identify and prioritize tasks that will have the biggest impact.

Adora highlights the importance of distinguishing between real and fake startup progress. Real progress is focused on growing your primary KPI, which is often either revenue or active users. On the other hand, fake progress is anything that does not directly contribute to growing your primary KPI, such as attending conferences, focusing on awards, or networking events. These activities are important in many ways, but they should not consume a significant amount of time.

Adora also explains the importance of journaling in great detail each day to determine if the tasks you are working on are truly helping you reach your goal. This exercise can be tedious, but it is necessary in order to identify tasks that are low-value and prevent them from taking up valuable time.

Finally, Adora recommends grading tasks based on their potential to help you meet your weekly goal. Tasks should be graded as High, Medium, or Low, and this will help you determine which ones are the most important to focus on.

Adora Cheung's video provides valuable insight into how to prioritize one's time. By understanding the distinction between real and fake progress, journaling each day, and grading tasks appropriately, you can make the most of your time and maximize your startup's chance for success.

For Learners

Watching Adora Cheung’s video, ‘How to Prioritize Your Time’, is a beneficial learning opportunity for life-long learners. In the video, Adora provides a clear and concise approach to maximizing the potential of your startup by focusing on the most impactful tasks and understanding the distinction between real and fake progress. This knowledge is invaluable to life-long learners that wish to use their time wisely and maximize the potential of their efforts.

When watching this video, learners can benefit from the ‘what’s in it for me’, ‘what’s in it for them’, ‘what’s in it for us’, and ‘what’s in it for the world’ approach. This approach is essential for personal growth and professional development. For example, Adora emphasizes the importance of focusing on tasks that involve talking to users, building and iterating product, and understanding primary KPIs to maximize the potential of your startup. This knowledge is beneficial for life-long learners as they can use it to develop their own startups and businesses or understand how to work more efficiently and effectively in their current positions.

Not learning the content of Adora Cheung’s video is a detriment to life-long learners. With a better understanding of the distinction between real and fake progress, as well as how to prioritize tasks to maximize potential, life-long learners will miss out on the opportunity to further their personal growth and professional development. Without this knowledge, learners will have a harder time making the most of their time and efforts and may struggle to reach their goals and maximize their potential.

For Employers

Watching Adora Cheung's video, "How to Prioritize Your Time" is a must for forward-thinking employers. Not only will it help them become better stewards of their own time, but it also provides employers with the knowledge they need to manage their teams more effectively. By understanding the concepts of how to differentiate between real and fake startup progress and how to prioritize tasks, employers can be sure to make the most of the time they have. This can have a positive effect on both the success of their business and the perception of their products by customers and clients. Employers who learn these skills can differentiate themselves from the competition and be seen as more successful and professional. By taking the time to watch this video, employers can reap the rewards of increased productivity, better team management, and higher customer satisfaction.

Career Path

Completing a course on Productivity can help people gain a valuable set of skills that will make them more employable and promotable in the future. Such a course can help close the skills gap towards meaningful work in high demand and high growth industries. Time management, startup and entrepreneurship, and organizing and prioritizing are all essential skills that employers and hiring managers value.

By taking courses on productivity and time management, people can become more knowledgeable and confident in their abilities, making them better equipped to tackle any challenges they may face in their careers. They can also use the knowledge and skills to become more innovative and creative in their work, giving them an edge when it comes to competing for a job or promotion. By having career-defining credentials, they will become more employable, promotable, and purposeful. This can open up new opportunities and help them reach their career goals.

Meaning

"The more we do, the more we can do" - William Hazlitt. This quote is a great reminder of the importance of productivity. Adora Cheung's video on how to prioritize time shows how it's possible to make the most of the time we have and maximize our chances for success. To prioritize effectively, it's important to identify tasks that will have the most impact on our progress and focus on growing our primary KPIs. It's easy to get distracted by things that don't bring us closer to our goal, but it's important to remember that time is precious and focus on the most important tasks. With a clear plan and focus, we can achieve incredible results and make the most of our time.

Takeaway

The most important key takeaway from this video is to prioritize tasks that contribute to real startup progress. This means focusing on growing the primary KPI, which is usually either revenue or active users. Additionally, it's important to avoid tasks that are not directly related to growing the primary KPI and to avoid switching tasks too often. Finally, it's important to keep a spreadsheet of ideas that can help move the primary KPI and to grade each task on how impactful it will be on achieving the weekly goal.