Don't. Waste. Time.

When it comes to efficiency/effectiveness, I prefer to focus on "Do" instead of "Don't".<p>Richard Hamming (from "You and Your Research"):<p><pre><code> 1. What are the most important problems in your field? 2. Are you working on one of them? 3. Why not? </code></pre> <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html</a><p>Paul Graham's (from "Good and Bad Procrastination") generalization of Richard Hamming:<p>What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?<p><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html</a><p>edw519's generalization of Paul Graham:<p>Work on the most important thing until it's not the most important thing any more.<p>I have developed this excellent/horrible habit of not being able to focus on very much of anything if there was something more important hanging over my head.<p>Excellent in keeping me from trivial pursuits. Horrible at meal time, bed time, other people time. I'm still a work in progress.

The key is to identify how you can best contribute, so you know whether or not you're wasting your time. If you're a small team, everyone's time might be best spent coding to deliver the product. A slightly bigger team might mean your time is best coordinating. The overhead of a "meeting" might be worth making sure everyone's aware of the design instead of creating isolated pieces of great code that doesn't work well with each other.<p>I might be wasting time writing code when I can best contribute by taking care of 'overhead' so my team isn't blocked - there's an anecdote here somewhere of the PM who would buy coffee for the team so the team can focus on producing code - or i might be wasting time taking care of 'overhead' that doesn't matter yet (planning the optimum office layout) when I can best contribute by writing code.<p>To know whether or not you're wasting time, you have to know what makes one work "fake" and the other "good", and my list may be vastly different from yours.

Opened up HN. Saw this headline at #1. Posted this comment. Now I'm closing HN and going back to work.

There is some truth to this but doing things like paperwork quickly can lead to a lot of trouble. Read <i>Anything You Want</i> by CD Baby founder Derek Sivers. He recommends not worrying about having Terms and Conditions on your website, and all kinds of other "formalities". Then he says breezing through some paperwork on a loan from his father accidentally cost him, I think, $2 Million. Letting his employees handle their stock option plan resulted in a profit sharing plan that gave every dollar to the employees. When he rescinded it, they hated him moving forward.

Good article. "Outsource all over the place" is so important. Pay some expert for a few hours of work that would take you a week (ie: healthcare).<p>The one thing that I do think is important though is business cards. We got business cards before we even got 1 line of code written. It just seems like an established way to exchange info at events more so than using "bump", I think.

Most blogs on time-management pale in comparison to The Ultimate Productivity Blog: <a href="http://productiveblog.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">http://productiveblog.tumblr.com/</a>

<p><pre><code> &#62;&#62; Founder equity splits </code></pre> The time to do founder equity splits is before you make a product that delights customers. If you think that is something you can work out after, you don't understand human nature.<p>Also, if you have problems working out founder equity splits, you probably have the wrong team.

Great tips. I've had the fortune of working with enough diverse freelancers over the years that most things that we don't have time for (design, for example), we can get done quickly and cost-efficiently. I really recommend sending small jobs out to people you can establish long-term relationships with over time, who will work with your budget. It pays off immensely.

He mentions that one shouldn't care much about business cards: I disagree. The small details, after you ship your major product, are the most important. They're what truly delight your users after the first 'wow'.<p>I would suggest a startup to, yes, first focus on the product. Once the product is done though, they should focus on the small, "trivial", details.

Another useful thing: Stick to deadlines. Otherwise, there is a tendency to take as much time as time is available. Don't assume that time is infinite. Give yourself short deadlines all day long and you'll get a lot more things done.

Thank you for this article. I coincidently read this quote earlier today and I think it relates really well:<p>"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing" -Thomas Edison

What I take from this is that time is more important than money; exchange money for time whenever possible. In many situations you have the option to exchange X dollars for Y hours of freed time - it's important to think about these situations in these terms, because it doesn't always look that way.

Just to touch on the essence of this article for interested parties: this concept is also known by the Japanese as "Gemba" and was popularized in industry (among many other lean principles) by Toyota's production system.

I think lean methodology goes best with this. What matters in initial stages is working prototype, validation and then MVP. Most of the initial time is supposed to be dedicated to this than spending it with operations.

Read his link about Series F stock; in order to implement such a plan it seems that you would have to disregard his advice to just pick simple defaults when incorporating.

Great article. The other most important thing which should be avoided in the startups is "Premature Optimization"

Where does "blogging" and "submitting your own writing to HN" fall on the wasting time list?

This article was a waste of my time.

Here's a calculator for founder equity split: <a href="http://foundrs.com/calculator/index.php" rel="nofollow">http://foundrs.com/calculator/index.php</a><p>(I think its faster than reading the whole QA session linked to in the original post.)

Sounds like common sense but you'd be amazed by how many people don't get it! I'm working with 2 startup organizations (my own business and I'm on the board of a charity) and I've seen a ton of time wasted on meta meetings (meetings about the next meeting), and getting paperwork exactly right when it just needs to be okay, etc.<p>Through my experience in my business I've been able to point them in the direction this article suggests. Basically, we only spend time on things that clearly get a goal achieved. The rest we just leave until we absolutely need it. There are things that need to be finished correctly right now that don't have an obvious impact on later success but those things are far fewer than one might think.

Why can't I learn what 42 floors is without putting in my email? <i>Really</i> annoying.