Y Combinator released a video entitled “How Future Billionaires Get Sh*t Done.” It’s a good one for founders. One of the things it touches on is time management. They reference a popular blog post Paul Graham wrote years ago titled “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.”

I like Paul’s characterization of a maker schedule versus a manager schedule. When you’re trying to do something hard, big blocks of uninterrupted time are critical. Any interruption, such as a meeting, can make the entire day unproductive. Half-day blocks make sense for people on a maker schedule. On the other hand, when you’re managing people, you meet a lot and work in thirty-minute or one-hour windows, stopping and starting often throughout the day.

When you’re an early-stage founder, you’ll have to do both. As a founder, switching between mental modes too often, I struggled before I eventually learned to use lunch as a natural separator. I was on a maker’s schedule before lunch and a manager’s schedule after.

Founders should consider the maker-versus-manager concept for themselves and their team. Getting people to understand it and adopt the right schedules can have a big impact on the company’s productivity!

I spent time walking with a founder friend. One of the things we talked about were two paths to success that we’ve seen be successful. One was high activity spread across many paths, and the other was low activity focused on a single or limited number of paths.

The high-activity path is a hustler’s path. Hustlers are constantly working on a variety of things and doing lots of activities. This approach is highly iterative and reactive. There isn’t much deep reflection or many predefined goals at the outset. It’s more go where things take you. These folks are constantly evaluating what new paths to take based on the results of the last activity. They repeat the cycle until it ends (hopefully) in whatever the hustler defines as success.

The low-activity path is strategic. Strategists spend time deciding on a destination on the front end. Activities that align with the goal are taken on; those that don’t (even if promising) are declined. They reflect along the way to determine if the things they’re doing are having the desired results. They continually dissect failures and adjust. This approach focuses on a goal and tries to determine the best path to it.

We concluded that success can be achieved in various ways. These are just two we’ve seen up close that resulted in outsize success. In each instance, the person’s personality fit their approach. The extroverted and high-activity person we knew took the hustler’s path. The deep-thinking and reserved person took the strategic path.

I listened to an old interview of Jeff Bezos explaining why he decided to leave his stable job to start Amazon. Not just any job—a high-paying job at an investment banking firm on Wall Street. It was a tough decision that he ultimately made using what he described as a regret-minimization framework.

He projected himself into the future to age 80. He wanted to minimize the number of regrets he would have as he looked back on his life. An important part of his thought process was identifying the things he’d regret not trying, even if he failed. Starting Amazon was one of them—even if it meant giving up his stable lifestyle.

I’m a huge fan of starting with the end in mind and working backward. I haven’t used a regret-minimization framework, but I’ve thought about what I want people to remember me for when I’m long gone and used that as a compass when making decisions.

For those fortunate enough to be able to consider only regret, I think it could be a good way to evaluate big decisions.

Founders tend to be impatient people. They have ideas, but they realize that it’s the execution of their ideas that matters. Most have high expectations around execution. They manage others with a focus on getting things done quickly. Their impatience can be a superpower, but it can also have unintended consequences.

Focusing exclusively on rapid execution at all costs can be a slippery slope. That type of management gets results, but at a cost. People burn out. The company’s culture can turn toxic. The business churns through people. The body count rises.

If you’re a founder, consider: Do you want a high body count to be part of your legacy? Does your current management style align with the legacy you want to leave behind you?

I had a conversation with an early founder who’s spent time in Atlanta’s and San Francisco’s start-up ecosystems. He’s trying to decide which will be his home base. I’m a huge advocate for Atlanta, so I was curious to hear his perspective on the two cities. He shared a variety of things, and the main thing he said stuck with me: San Francisco embraces dreamers; Atlanta embraces hustlers.

From his time in San Francisco, he learned it’s a city that respects big, outlandish visions. Even if it sounds crazy, people (investors and other founders) will support it. There’s a belief that the outlandish can become reality, have a big impact on society, and generate massive financial returns. Atlanta, he said, is a city that respects action and execution. Getting stuff done and moving things forward matter most. People prefer execution to big visions.

I’ve never heard anyone make this comparison before, and it got me thinking. I haven’t spent enough time out west to judge San Francisco, but I do know Atlanta well. I’m not sure that I agree with him. I think Atlanta embraces big-picture thinking but is also pragmatic. The pragmatism is rooted in the exits local start-ups have had. As those exits have increased in size, so have beliefs around what’s practical (for better or worse). As more founders have larger exits, I think we’ll continue to see bigger dreams embraced by the city.

An early-stage founder asked me for advice on handling a weird cofounder dynamic. This CEO realized that his team doesn’t respect his cofounder. Finding this odd, I dug in. I learned that the cofounder is used to a more corporate setting with resources and a team beneath him. He sees his lane as being narrow and stays squarely in it. Translation: the cofounder isn’t used to getting his hands dirty and taking on tasks he isn’t experienced in.

Early-stage companies are in constant flux and usually have only a handful of people. What needs to be done changes constantly, and there are never enough resources to get everything done. Often, everyone works on tasks outside their role—leaders included—until the company has the resources and scale to hire sufficient staff.

Early-stage founders should lead by example and be ready to get their hands dirty. Otherwise, they risk losing the respect of their team. It’s hard for your people to wrap their heads around running through a wall for you if you won’t run through one yourself.

I met with a founder about his successful fundraise. I was curious about what he learned from the process. Some of his learnings are to be expected; for example, realizing that to hit his goal, he needed to pitch more investors than he planned for. But he also shared something else: he didn’t crystalize his pitch (or finalize his pitch deck) until the end of his fundraise process.

This founder talked to many people who poked holes in his business from many angles. He was asked questions he’d never thought about. Most of those pitches ended in a no, but he reflected, talked with his cofounders, and made changes when necessary. While painful, the fundraising process gave him more clarity about, and confidence in, what they’re attempting to do.

A founder spends lots of time preparing a fundraising pitch deck. They often feel they’ve created a masterpiece. Many are surprised when they learn it’s just the beginning. Their masterpiece may look very different by the end of a successful fundraising.

One big hurdle for some aspiring founders is their lifestyle—the amount of money required to maintain it is so high that entrepreneurship isn’t a viable option. There’s an argument that every dollar that goes into the founder’s pocket reduces the resources available to scale the company. You often see founders take small salaries with large equity positions in the early years. The thought is that if the business is successful, the equity will be orders of magnitude larger than the forgone salary.

You may not have thought about it this way, but personal burn rate and optionality are correlated (for most people). The higher your personal burn rate, the lower your optionality. A high personal burn rate prevents many people from entertaining opportunities with a big upside but lower initial salary.

Anyone serious about founding a company or joining an early-stage company should keep their personal burn rate as low as possible. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy life. Nothing’s wrong with doing one-off things that bring you joy, such as taking a trip. It does mean to be strategic about the recurring monthly payments and other monthly outflows you get accustomed to.

I like to think of a low burn rate not as limiting, but rather as not allowing past decisions to restrict your options. The lower the personal burn, the more interesting opportunities you can consider.

When I was younger, I made a series of decisions rooted in groupthink. Everyone else was doing it—whatever “it” was at the time—so I figured I should too. Some of those decisions proved to be painful. Upon reflection, I realized I was following the crowd instead of thinking for myself.

These days I’m very aware of this. If I find myself thinking about doing what everyone else is doing, I’ll pause and ask myself why I want to do it. If I can’t identify a reason that’s specific to my situation, I go the other way. This is difficult and sometimes isolating, but it’s served me well over the years.

I feel we’re in a period of escalating groupthink in a variety of areas. The people who think for themselves will be uncomfortable in the short to medium term but will ultimately be proven correct.

Today marks the end of my one-hundred-eighth week of working from home (mostly). Here are my takeaways from week one hundred eight:

• Energy – I thought it would take me a bit to get back in the groove after vacation. I surprised myself by jumping back in full throttle with no problems.
• Unplanned interactions – This week ended up being filled with unplanned interactions and connections with people. Although it was unexpected, it ended up being a great thing. Lots of good stuff came from those interactions.  

Week one hundred eight was a high-activity week. I drew a lot of energy from talking with folks. Looking forward to more focus time next week.