⚡ Get All Content for 20% Off ⚡

First Things First: The 5 Secrets to Prioritization In the world of startups, entrepreneurs have very little time. To help organize tasks and responsibilities, consider these tips.

By Jake Gibson

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Time is money and for entrepreneurs starting out, it is imperative both are utilized to their fullest. To maximize both, founders must prioritize.

When we first started out, we were wrestling with some problems on how to build our personal-finance website, NerdWallet. I got some great advice from my friend Drew Houston (the founder of Dropbox).

"It's OK to have growing pains, as long as you're prioritizing correctly and working to address them. Every company looks messy from the inside," he told me.

Am I prioritizing correctly? There's the rub.

When I was working on Wall Street, prioritization was dictated by the situation. Compared to growing your own business, prioritizing on a trading floor is easy, because you're always putting out fires but you know what the fires are.

Related: The Only Productivity Tip You'll Ever Need

But knowing how to prioritize to ensure your startup makes millions of dollars in the next six months -- that's a more difficult task.

Here are some of the lessons I've learned so far.

1. Beware the seduction of task-based lists. The elements of prioritization are simple: Know what tasks need to be done and rank them in order of priority. Stephen Covey of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fame suggested ranking tasks across four metrics: important/not important and urgent/not urgent. Obviously, tasks both urgent and important go first, issues not important or not urgent go last, and the rest fall somewhere in between. You've got your list.

This is fine, so far as it goes, but the process can create a sense a false sense of satisfaction: If I cross everything off this list, will I have done my best work today? This might work for middle managers at a mature company, but for a startup entrepreneur this can be a Sisyphean exercise in futility. You're never going to finish that list and would waste time each day revising it on the fly.

2. Focus solely on themes that will drive growth. Of the 100 things that crowd the entrepreneurial mind as things you "need to do," about 98 will incrementally improve your company -- but two have the potential for exponential growth. Focus on those few, and the rest of your niggling worries will take care of themselves.

Related: 10 Simple Things Productive People Do Better (And So Can You)

A better way to think of prioritization is not tasks but themes. What are the two or three principal things that will drive growth? You really have to understand the key drivers of your business and anything that doesn't move those drivers isn't a high priority.

For example, in the early days of NerdWallet, a key driver was getting the most amount of web traffic in the least amount of time. That became a filter through which we sifted every task and decision. If it didn't meet this metric, it wasn't a priority.

3. Forget perfectionism. Entrepreneurs are often Type A overachievers. For us, it's really hard to let things go unfinished and not be perfect. But if you are serious about prioritization, you need to be able to drop something in midstream to focus on another task that has greater potential to drive results.

It may feel counterintuitive, but in the rough-and-tumble drive to start a company, perfectionism can be a problem. You have to be willing to do things half way just to get more done with the higher chances to yield strong results. And that isn't easy for high performers.

4. Do the hardest thing first. Procrastination isn't a species of laziness, it's avoidance -- and we naturally avoid things we don't want to do. Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, once said that the first thing he does in the office each day is the task he dreads the most. Whatever you don't want to do, do it first, and it eliminates the nagging dread that will sap energy away from other tasks as you postpone the inevitable.

5. Don't plug leaky boat holes -- switch boats. If you're spending your time spreading your fingers and toes across leaks springing up through the hull of a business venture, you may wish you had more feet and hands to cover the deck.

But maybe the real problem is the boat itself.

As NerdWallet co-founder Tim Chen puts it: "Don't spend your time plugging a leaky boat, spend your time switching boats." Time spent bailing is time taken away from adding more profitable vessels to your fleet.

Prioritization pressure never goes away. If things are going well in your business, something will always seem on fire. If you've got things under control, that's a big red flag -- it's a sign you are doing what is urgent, and not what is important.

Related: 6 Steps to Managing Your Overwhelming Workload

Jake Gibson

Co-founder and Advisor of NerdWallet

Jake Gibson is the co-founder and advisor of NerdWallet, a startup focused on offering price-comparison tools for financial products. Prior to joining the company, Gibson did a long stint at JPMorgan Chase, where he traded derivatives and managed new automated trading technologies.

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

Side Hustle

The Remote Side Hustle a 43-Year-Old Musician Works on for 1 Hour a Day Earns Nearly $3,000 a Month: 'All From the Comfort of Home'

Sam Ziegler wanted to supplement his income as a professional drummer — then his tech skills and desire to help people came together.

Business News

Costco CFO Reveals Uncertain Fate of $1.50 Hot Dog and Soda Combo

CFO Richard Galanti reveals that the price will stay the same — but only "for a while."

Marketing

Ever Wonder Why Certain Websites Rank Higher Than Yours? This SEO Expert Reveals The Secret to Dominating Search Results

It's often the smart use of SEO, now supercharged with AI, particularly in keyword optimization.

Leadership

Former Interrogator Shares 5 Behaviors Liars Exhibit and How to Handle Them

Five deceptive behaviors to look for and how to respond to those behaviors when you encounter them.

Business News

AI Is Impacting Jobs. Here Are the Gigs Affected the Most, According to an Analysis of 5 Million Upwork Postings

The researcher said in the report that freelance jobs were analyzed first because that market will likely see AI's immediate impact.