Adora Cheung - How to Prioritize Your Time

Adora Cheung begins by emphasizing how precious time is as a resource, explaining that in startups, wasting time is equivalent to wasting money.
Since startups have limited funding, misusing time leads to very high opportunity costs.
"Time is the fundamental factor that determines a startup's survival."
Therefore, using time as efficiently as possible to maximize a startup's chances of success is critical.

Adora acknowledges that everyone can invest different amounts of time in their startup. The talk focuses on "how to make the most effective use of whatever time you dedicate to your startup (2 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, etc.)."
"It's not about how much time you invest, but how you use that time that matters more."

Adora stresses the importance of distinguishing between "real startup progress" and "fake startup progress."
Real startup progress: Activities that grow the startup's core metrics (KPIs).
- Examples: Talking to users, product development and iteration.
Fake startup progress: Activities not directly related to core metrics.
- Examples: Attending conferences, winning awards, networking events, optimizing wrong metrics.
"The goal of a startup is not to feed vanity, but to deliver real value to customers."

Adora emphasizes that the most important thing in a startup's early stage is growing the "primary KPI."
- The primary KPI is usually defined as revenue or active users.
Each week, set specific weekly goals based on the primary KPI and choose the most effective tasks to achieve them.
"The highest-leverage tasks for growing your primary KPI are always talking to users, building product, and iterating."

Create a task list: Record all ideas, but don't execute immediately — add them to the list.
- "New ideas always look better, but executing them immediately only creates chaos."
Evaluate tasks: Assess each task by its impact on weekly goals and complexity.
- Impact: How likely the task is to contribute to achieving the weekly goal.
  - High: High likelihood of achieving the weekly goal.
  - Medium: Moderate likelihood.
  - Low: Low likelihood.
- Complexity: How long the task takes to complete.
  - Easy: Completable within a day.
  - Medium: Takes 1-2 days.
  - Hard: Takes multiple days.
Prioritize tasks:
- Start with "high impact + easy tasks."
- Move to "high impact + medium complexity tasks."
- Avoid "low impact + hard tasks."
- "Don't try to do everything at once — choose an appropriate amount and focus."

Adora recommends daily journaling to evaluate your time usage.
- Record what you did each hour over the past week and evaluate how much each task contributed to the primary KPI.
- "We instinctively choose easy tasks and feel satisfaction from checking items off a list. But these are often low-value tasks."
She also recommends writing weekly updates documenting goal achievement and key learnings, reviewing them periodically.
- "Use weekly updates to check how quickly you're learning and whether wrong tasks have crept into your schedule."

Adora recommends a modified "Maker-Manager Schedule."
- "High-focus tasks like coding" and "meeting tasks like user conversations" have high switching costs, so splitting work into full-day or half-day blocks is more efficient.
- "If you're a solo founder, optimizing your schedule is even more important."

Adora emphasizes that "moving fast and learning" is the most important thing in the early stages of a startup.
- "Making decisions quickly and thoughtfully is important. Even if you make the wrong choice, learning and correcting fast produces better results."
- "Choosing the wrong task quickly and course-correcting is better than slowly choosing the perfect task."

The key to prioritizing time is:
1. Focus on tasks that directly impact the primary KPI.
2. Start with high-impact, low-complexity tasks.
3. Talk to users, build product, and iterate.
4. Move fast and learn.
"A startup's success depends on how you use your time."

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