You can be on Entrepreneur’s cover!

4 Ways to Work With a Partner to Achieve More It helps to have a 'training partner' to help you with your day-to-day work, entrepreneurial goals, and personal projects.

By Joel Gascoigne

entrepreneur daily

This story originally appeared on Buffer

Shutterstock

In the world of weight training, it's well known that having a partner can lead to seeing gains more quickly. And research has shown that those who switch from training alone to using a personal trainer see many improvements.

Similarly, pair programming has been shown to improve quality of code, as well as keep both developers in "flow" state for a more sustained period of time.

The people around you can have a significant impact on your behavior. If I tell a friend about my goals, I'm much more likely to achieve them.

Related: 5 Ways Personal Growth Makes Your Business

Finding a "life training' partner

As I continuously work to improve myself, I've found that it helps to always have a "training partner"—for my day-to-day work, my entrepreneurial goals, and my personal projects like writing.

A few years ago, I consistently had a weekly meeting with my great friend Khuram, in which we discussed our achievements and challenges to help each other keep pushing forward.

Today, my co-founder Leo and I act as personal trainers for each other for our work and life goals.

Here are four ways Leo and I work together as training partners to improve ourselves and meet our goals, in case you might want to give this method a try, too:

1. Writing a list for the next day.

One of the activities Leo and I have built as a habit is to sit down together for 20 minutes at the end of each day and plan the key tasks we each want to do the next day.

We've found that whenever we plan the day ahead, we're much more productive, we procrastinate less, and we feel happier as a result.

This is something I can definitely recommend you do with your co-founders—or, if you're part of a team, you could try it with a co-worker.

2. Talking through daunting tasks.

Whenever there's something I need to work on that I find myself struggling to get started with, I will book a slot with Leo to ask him to work through it with me.

Related: 7 Mindsets at the Foundation of Entrepreneurial Success

This is especially useful for analyzing and brainstorming, where you need to map out many things and come to some conclusions.

Although I do it with Leo, I am mostly leading it and it is one of those cases where simply explaining something to someone can help me a lot.

3. Sharing achievements and challenges

When Leo and I were both in San Francisco, the most productive few hours of my week were Friday night, when Leo and I would go to Samovar, drink tea and have a systematic mastermind session.

We've had many different iterations of the structure of our mastermind sessions, and they're still evolving today. Some teammates use this structure today:

  • 20 minutes to share and celebrate your achievements
  • 40 minutes to discuss your current top challenges

Each of these sections serve a slightly different purpose and combine to create a very productive session.

In addition, we also have one-on-one mentoring meetings with a slightly different structure—instead of performance updates, it's become a more open-ended way to work through challenges, get advice and brainstorm together.

4. Brainstorming blog posts together, in detail

When I originally started blogging, I wrote every post completely by myself. When Leo came on board, I naturally started discussing future posts with him, and he was super encouraging and interested.

Now when I write, I deliberately brainstorm many of my articles with Leo, right down to the individual sections. It makes my writing task much easier, and the posts are better as a result.

Today, our whole Content Crafters team collaborates closely on everything we publish—accountability and collaboration makes ideas stronger.

Related: 5 Ways Personal Growth Makes Your Business Stronger

Joel is the founder and CEO at Buffer. He is focused on the lean startup approach, user happiness, transparency & company culture.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Growing a Business

To Achieve Sustainable Success, You Need to Stop Focusing on Disruption. Here's Why — and What You Must Focus on Instead.

Instead of zeroing in solely on disruptive innovation, embrace a pragmatic approach to innovation, recognizing and leveraging the potential within ongoing industry shifts.

Business News

Mark Zuckerberg Says This CEO Is the 'Taylor Swift' of Tech

Meta's CEO posed with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Instagram Wednesday.

Real Estate

3 Emerging Trends Shaping the Future of Real Estate

These three innovations are reshaping the real estate industry — discover tips for effectively covering these trends.

Leadership

What We Have to Gain By Talking About Grief and Loss At Work

I lost my husband to cancer during Covid — here's how it changed how I lead at work.

Side Hustle

This Mom Started a Side Hustle After a 'Shocking' Realization in the Toy Aisle. Her Product Was in Macy's Within the Year — Seeing Nearly $350,000 in Sales.

Elenor Mak, now founder of Jilly Bing, didn't plan to start a business — but the search for a doll that looked like her daughter inspired her to do just that.

Fundraising

Avoid These 9 Pitch Deck Mistakes When Asking Others For Money

Crafting an efficient pitch deck requires serious effort, but at least it's not wandering in the dark since certain rules are shaped by decades of relationships between startups and investors.