Happy Mother’s Day! Happy Labor Day!

It is interesting how people schedule their time. I will write down my best practice. It reflects a unified approach, since I am a solo entrepreneur. I try to be the executive, the developer, and the marketer at the same time.

mothersday

Copyright© Miklos Szegedi, 2023.

I tried many working styles during my career. I started at a small company for a few years. I worked for Microsoft for nine different managers in eight years. They represented many cultures and many working styles.

The main concept that made me successful wherever I had the potential was the review. Most companies have some sort of review process, which try to connect corporate strategy to individual teams. I had to learn that activity is important to some managers, but they usually value results that they can translate to their management. Wherever I could help to get my manager promoted, I did well.

Managers tend to be very busy. To connect between product and engineering, they talk a lot. Good managers tend to be good at psychology and mentoring. They build a relationship. They also need to make sure things get done. The best ones I worked with usually communicated very clearly and talked to us engineers a lot in all hands meetings.

Developers tend to be busy as well. Some companies still favor the IBM waterfall development style, with long sprints, and some stabilization at the end. Stabilization helps to wind down a bit and reorganize your thought on systems. I also worked on agile teams. This usually works better, if the product is mature, and it just needs to be maintained to generate revenue.

An important vague term referring to engineers is burnout. Originally the term was applied to medical workers, who tended to have common symptoms of lost interest and efficiency. This was strongly correlated to relationships with people in research papers. There are many books, research papers and professions that try to address it.

The best advice I ever received from a program manager was about time. When people are not satisfied, they complain about time lost. When you do regular reviews, you give feedback on time spent well. If your time is not spent well you probably get feedback from multiple directions. This is an easy way to feel exhausted. You take control, and you will feel less stressed.

Program manager are naturally busy, it comes with their title.

Product managers may not seem to be busy occasionally. However, they tend to do their busy time off-site or off-hours trying to connect to customers and vendors.

Executives on the other hand tend not to be so busy. Their main responsibility is to carry out the strategy. Good executives choose their staff and their review process wisely, so that they are idle most of the time. This allows them to refine the strategy, and most importantly to be there when there is an unexpected situation.

This is how I built up my daily work as well.

I set aside four hours a day for asset building such as development, writing, manufacturing, etc. This is connected to actual cash flow.

I also spend four hours on general sales, meetings, webinar or white paper research. While these do not generate revenue directly, they build the foundation for future projects.

I tend to make “half cooked” projects or business plans. I just invest the last 10% when they are due with the latest and greatest data available.

Lastly I reserve a four-hour buffer every day for unexpected work. Normally I spend this time with the family, so that I am always there when they need it. I also do sports during this time. However, sometimes there is a project to finish, a deadline to meet, or a potential customer to reply to. This is the time then gives me the edge to rock it whatever happens. This time also allows me to drill into insights, and do some brainstorming. I built hundred to hundred and fifty business ideas this way.