So what do you do when you wake up at 4am with a leg cramp and then lie in bed for the next 45 minutes wondering if it will come back while the challenges of the upcoming day are whirling through your brain? Well, if you’re the CEO of a startup company you get up and start your day!
It’s now 7:20am and I’ve been at it for 2 1/2 hours. I’ve done all my normal “start of the day things” and I feel like I have “bonus” time this morning – extra time to accomplish extra stuff!
It ain’t true. I may have gotten an early start but as Showcase U Co-Founder Chad Durbin reminds me … “You can’t catch up on lost sleep.” Chad depends on peak physical performance in his day job as a Major League Baseball pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. But I’m reminded that we all rely on peak physical performance in order to do our jobs as well as possible. Oh sure, I’ve “caffeined-up!” and am on a roll right now. But I’ve been here before and know that by late this afternoon I may be at my desk working hard but I will not be at peak performance.
Days like this will happen, so it’s important that I adjust my day plan accordingly. This is a good moment to share one of the success strategies that I employ. I plan my day with action items in a bullet point list so that it’s easy for me to quickly flow from one task to another. I set the priority of those action items during a calm moment at the beginning of the day so that I don’t need to think about what’s most important once the day gets on a roll. I’m also able to quickly identify those action items that can be accomplished with less creative thought.
You can bet that I’ll be checking those “I don’t need my brain as much” activities off my list later this afternoon.
#1 on my Showcase U action list today is “Website Issue Priority List”. We launched the www.showcaseu.com website last week but the real hard work begins after the launch of a website. Oh believe me, the building of a website is an all-consuming project, but it’s very important to keep energy reserves for the work that must be done once you are public to the world. We felt the site was good enough to go live, but our website issues priority list is currently 75 items long! As a startup company it’s extremely important to properly prioritize everything as you typically have less resources at your disposal than more established companies.
I bet I sleep well tonight.
