Rahul Varshneya

It’s crazy starting up, isn’t it? There are an end number of things that require your attention daily and almost all of them at the same time. Bogs you down completely, making you go helter-skelter looking for resources to help you in your tasks.

Most often, you feel bogged down with the number of tasks at hand and so many answers to seek that you don’t even get started with them until the time that it can’t be stretched anymore. And then when you look back, you feel you could have completed the task much earlier and could have gotten far better results.

End of the day then, when you go to bed, do you feel you’ve achieved something that day? Or do you go to bed with another set of to-dos that require your attention the following day?

For most, it’s the latter. And that is what prevents one from being a successful startup entrepreneur. For me too, this was the case. Up until I read this quote from Steve Jobs in his biography, “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.” And it changed my life.

With further inspiration from Steve Jobs, I created a strategy that I would test on myself. A strategy that would get me to complete tasks that I would have normally taken months, to complete within 10 days! And I now want to share this with you so that you too can successfully startup and be more productive growing your business.

The Crazy-5 Rule

What is the Crazy-5 Rule? You only do 5 things in a day. Only 5 tasks that take you from point A to point B that particular day. Not something that is linked to tomorrow, for the day to come is only a figment of your imagination. Until you’ve lived it, you can’t be sure it will exist.

Why Crazy-5? Because most people will find doing only 5 things in a day crazy. And that, when you’re a startup entrepreneur.

How does Crazy-5 Rule work?

Here’s what you need to do. Buy a beautiful, snazzy handbook or a diary to take notes. Why beautiful? Because it’s got to be by your side at all times, you surely want something that’s stunning!

When you wake up in the morning, pick up the handbook and jot down all the tasks that you need your attention that very day. Once you’ve chalked those down, look for clusties. What are clusties? Simply a to-do list sentence that has a cluster of to-dos within one to-do. (Yes, I just invented that word!)

You need to break these clusties into just one to-do. You will find that there will be many tasks you have written down that are linked and are actually a set of multiple things. Strike those off and make them independent and a simple, single task.

Once you’ve done this, you will realize that your task list has just expanded. Don’t worry as we’re working to make it as powerful as it can get.

Now, start striking off tasks that you can live without. Your focus should be retaining only 5 tasks that you absolutely must do today that will help you to get from point A to point B. Not 10 and certainly not 6. Just 5.

Why 5? Let’s say you get about 8 productive working hours each day. You then want to spend at least a good hour’s focus on doing one task. Leaving you with 3 hours for thinking time and certain daily mundane tasks.

Get on with your day working on those 5 tasks. As you complete each one, strike them out. Don’t place a tick mark against it. Just strike it off. (You’d be more satisfied seeing something struck off the list.)

Now what you will notice is that at the end of the day, you would have known exactly what you did, all the tasks that were crucial and how much more you just accomplished in a day!

Why this works?

You will see that when marketing, finance, sales, funding strategy, and much more are fighting for your attention everyday, you are doing far less by doing little of each.

What you essentially are doing is paying very little focused attention on the most crucial tasks, which all of these are!

How the Crazy-5 helps you is to first take your attention off the clutter in your mind. That instantly frees up a lot of space. Then, it fills it up with only 5 (albeit most important) tasks that need to be done today.

What you have now done is that you’ve focused on the most crucial tasks of today and completed them effectively. Making room for 5 more tomorrow when you wake up. And then another 5 the day after tomorrow. And this goes on.

By doing this everyday for 10 days, you will realize that you would have achieved all that you wanted to do in all the areas of your business much faster and in a more focused manner, leaving you with room for more time to think strategy.

Not only does it give you more time to think strategy, but also more focused time to execute it.

10 days later, you’d be more productive, would have achieved far more and would have a far greater sense of satisfaction that you gave your best at all that you did for your startup. And then leave the rest to lady luck.

Take this as a challenge. Do it for 10 days and I guarantee you will see fantastic results, just as I did. Share your experience after 10 days in the comments below to inspire others who are on the fence.

photo credit: Dricker94 via photopin cc