Are You Prioritizing the Right Tasks?

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There are hundreds of things you could be possibly working on to increase your primary capii. Is what you're working on right now, the best thing you can do to meet your weekly goal? Or have you tricked yourself into doing something else? The reason i'm skeptical is because it's actually quite easy for low value work to unnoticeably creep into your schedule. So here's an experiment: Try journalling in great detail of each day in the past week, every single hour. Be honest on what you thought the impact was before you actually did it,. I think you'll be surprised by how much of it was actually low value work.

We've cut down the eighth week of lectures to be even shorter and combined them into one podcast.

First a lecture from Adora Cheung. Adora’s a partner at YC. Her lecture covers how to prioritize your time.

Then a lecture from Kevin Hale. Kevin is also a partner at YC. His lecture is the second part of his talk on how to evaluate startup ideas.

Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.

Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

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Topics

00:00 - Intro

00:32 - Adora Cheung - How to Prioritize Your Time

2:12 - Real vs fake progress

4:10 - How to determine if you're prioritizing the right tasks

4:42 - Keep a spreadsheet of ideas related to moving your primary KPI

7:32 - Grade the new and old ideas once a week based on potential impact

9:52 - Consider the complexity of each task

11:32 - Don't try to do everything at once

11:52 - How do I know I'm prioritizing my time well?

13:42 - What if I can't complete my tasks in time?

14:02 - Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

15:32 - Moving fast

16:47 - Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas Pt. 2

18:52 - How to apply to Y Combinator

20:17 - As a YC partner, you don't need to sell me

21:12 - Can I understand the idea? Am I excited by it? Do I like the team and want to work with them?

21:47 - How do I describe my company in a very efficient manner?

22:52 - Making your idea legible

25:12 - Things to avoid when describing your company

27:34 - Be conversational

28:02 - Avoid jargon, no preamble, and be reproducible

28:47 - Nouns: what are you making, what is the problem, and who is the customer

32:47 - Using the X for Y formula of explaining your startup

36:57 - Be concise without leaving out the key nouns

40:47 - How to adjust a description