How I actually run a week

• Switching between tasks/email/slack is one of the biggest time drains
• Have SET times to check email and Slack - the amount of time that can be consumed by being ultra-responsive on Slack/email is frightening.
• I check email/slack in three 15min slots at the start, lunchtime, and then end of every day. I find this schedule means I never leave team members waiting v long for answers, plus i don’t sit there refreshing my email/slack constantly
• I make sure to tell my team that if anything is time-critical, they call me. This is a true game-changer. Find a schedule that works for you and your team!
• Try and do meetings back to back, to reduce ‘switching’ cost when you jump from task to task.
• E.g. you are scheduling 4 x 30 min meetings, look at the schedules below - the one on the left will have small gaps between meetings, which is often wasted as you spend a little time ‘processing’ the previous meeting, and then switching focus for the free 30mins you have, before switching focus for the upcoming meeting. Hugely inefficient.
• The schedule on the right leaves a solid 1hr 30 min gap to spend doing some solid, focused work. It is vastly better than the schedule on the left.

• Try to structure your week, and focus on specific things on each day. For me:
• Monday - meetings: 1:1’s with all of my team, work with founders, team call
• Tuesday - no meetings, deep work on my 3 biggest priorities
• Wednesday - focus on company metrics and understanding biggest drivers
• Thursday - check-in's with my team, progress on my 3 biggest priorities
• Friday - admin day, review financials + metrics, reflection on week/strategy, and feedback, and thinking about my big priorities for the next week
• I stole this idea from Jack Dorsey (link)
• Do a time audit - at the end of the week, review what you ACTUALLY spent your time on in the week. The first half-dozen times i did this, i was shocked how much time i spent on ‘reactionary’ tasks like slack/emails… I bet you 95% of people have never done and will never do this. Be the 5%.

• Book out ‘meetings’ with just yourself, for focused/deep work
• I try and have one of these slots each day, at least 2 hours, so I have time to actually do my work, instead of just meetings/emails/slack/replying to others
• Remember the question, “What did you achieve this week?”. MBAs will have lots of great meetings, the best founders will have solved user problems.
• Try to have one day per week without any meetings
• Include recurring tasks on your diary - for example, I have a slot on Mondays to review the business performance numbers, I have a slot on Fridays to give feedback to my team - this avoids me just randomly checking things at random times which is obviously quite inefficient

• I use Cron (now Notion Calendar), which is vastly superior to Google Calendar
• Everything is doable via keyboard shortcuts
• Scheduling meetings/times is really easy, as it has shortcuts and prepopulates diary invites
• Basics like my personal Zoom link come up as default
• Use Calendly for sharing your calendar availability

• Magnet - arrange windows and use screen space effectively
• Raycast - a command centre for Mac
• Flux - automatically reduces blue light later in the day based on your timezone
• Unsplash wallpapers - Make your computer a pleasant experience (similar to your phone). It changes your wallpaper daily to beautiful scenes.
• Use ChatGPT for a lot. Get into the rhythms of using this for as much as you can.
• A cool tip I recently read was asking ChatGPT what questions to ask it if you’re looking to get to an answer, not only the questions themselves.
• With that said, it’s always good to develop your thinking first and then check it and improve it using ChatGPT and then the above method.

• Noise cancelling headphones to remove background noise
• I use these
• Again, these are basics, don’t be the guy who fumbles around trying to connect/reconnect their crappy knock off airpods, it’s embarrassing.

• Invest the time to fix your default settings on software that you use, e.g.
• Zoom - the number of times I’m on zoom calls, and the ‘host has disabled screen sharing’ - FIX THIS ! It’s so simple to do and saves precious time and more importantly, momentum. Don’t be that idiot who fumbles around their tech. How to guide here.
• Also don’t be the time waster who asks ‘Can you see my screen?’, and mess around asking for affirmations from the audience. Assume the audience can see it and let them tell you it’s not working.
• Google Calendar - as default, allow guests full permission to ‘Modify event’ - makes changes to events/adding guests etc MUCH easier, no more “I can’t invite X because i can’t edit the invite”, very silly slowing of momentum. I have no idea why people do this. Maybe it’s a power thing.

• Disable the Zoom waiting room of death. You’re not discussing nuclear codes, it’s cool if meetings overrun and someone else jumps on - if anything, it shows humanity, and also is a seamless transition to jump from a late running call.

• Have designated reading time (for me, it’s immediately when I wake up, with a cup of coffee)
• Get in the habit of carrying around a book with you wherever you go - this embeds the habit and normalises it for you. When waiting in line or on a train, reach for your book and not doom scrolling your phone.
• Buy this to use as a bookmark, and for making notes: LINK
• Buy this to use as a pen carrier, it literally attaches to your book so you ALWAYS have a pen to hand for notes: LINK
• The combo of both of these means you ALWAYS have a pen/paper to hand with your book, so you can make notes of books and retain information. This was gamechanging for me. Reading + not retaining is the same as watching Netflix.

• I use Notion to track the books I read, when i’ve read them, and also for my notes on each book. I’d highly suggest it!
• Here’s my reading list for those who are interested:
• https://www.notion.so/74fd4c0a51f2493db1948682ea22a403?v=5c06c3b91b804ba3a12b36a69d88af88

• If you want to change the world, start by turning up to meetings on time ;)
• By default, have notifications 1 minute before the start of the meeting. When the notification pops up, join the meeting, so it can start on time. Don’t be the person who joins at 1.01pm or 1.02pm, it wastes time, starts the meeting on a sour note, and is rude.
• To do this: Google Calendar > Settings > Settings for my calendars > [Your calendar] > Event notifications > Add notification for 1 minute
• I also have one for 5 minutes before, so if i’m currently on a call, I know to wrap up the previous meeting. This way, i’m very very very rarely late for meetings.

• WRITE THINGS DOWN - if you don’t write things down, the chances are much higher that actions WILL be lost.

• Avoid the 30 minutes default meeting. Some meetings only need to be 15 minutes, schedule them accordingly.
• Similar to the above, even if you don’t have a meeting afterwards have a commitment straight afterwards to ensure the meeting ends on time. Often meetings will overrun purely because they can. If you know in advance that you have 30 mins, stuff generally is covered in that time.
• Rules for meetings
• Single decision maker/owner
• Owner should be hands-on
• MAX 8 ppl
• Start and end on time
• Easy to kill
• If you attend, then attend - don’t go on phone/email etc. If you’re not needed, then leave, it’s not rude. What’s rude is to stay in the meeting and then go on your phone.
• 3 Key elements of a great meeting:
• Desired outcome of the meeting is clear beforehand
• Various options are clear, ahead of time
• Roles of participants are clear

• Most notifications turned off
• No email notifications on phone
• Whatsapp, Telegram - most conversations muted (with the exception of family/colleagues who i use Whatsapp with) - i have set times to check these messages
• Greyscale to make using the phone less tempting
• when i triple-click the side button, my iPhone toggles from greyscale to normal colour - you can do this in Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut > select Colour Filters
• A clean home page
• Very few apps on the bottom banner thing

Compare my home screen to a more standard home screen. Full of apps, colour, red notifications, and STRESS!

I didn’t even realise how genius this feature was from Apple - it makes your phone irresistible - when you MOVE your phone, the screen turns on. I never even realised this. So i turned this off. It’s called ‘raise to wake’. Steve really was a genius. How to turn it off here.

Apple then have a second layer, which is when you touch the screen, the screen turns on. Genius design to keep you hooked. I turned this off also. It’s called ‘Tap to Wake’. How to turn it off here.

I guess the main story here is, CONTROL YOUR SURROUNDINGS. Each of us has the same 1,440 minutes as the rest of us, it is up to you to control how you use this. Be the 1%.

By far the most important. Say no to incremental or crap projects, even if your boss/manager asks you. In my projects, i’m not interested in rearranging the lifeboats, we go for 10x. Only work on things that will move the needle, accept the pain on everything else.

• I use ‘EmailMe’, an iOS app
• In one click, i can type out a note or do a voicenote from my iphone/mac/apple watch, and it sends all notes to one folder in my email. This means I very rarely miss ‘actions’ from meetings, or even things like when someone recommends a good book/podcast, or even personal tasks!
• Having a system like this is step 1 of the best 5-step process that I know of, on how to manage to do lists (the full 5 steps is here) (the original book on this is a must read, here)
• Important thing is finding something that works for you, i know others have success with Todoist, Trello, Notion, even a pen/paper.
• For in person meetings - i carry a pocket notebook and pen, LINK. I promise you, the person who takes notes, completes actions promptly, and gets shit done, is very rare.

• Most of us will read lots of relevant information that could assist with our careers - this could come from books/blogs/linkedin/podcasts/talking to others etc. I’d highly recommend trying to capture this information, and then trying to ‘tag’ this information with a category. You can then compile all information with the same tag into one big repository. I do this in Notion.
• Once you’ve done this, in real time you can then revisit this repository as and when needed - I do this very often, for example when doing an interview or negotiation, I can then just open up my notes and use this to help me. HIGHLY recommend this.

• Have pre-created templates for the most common things you often repeat in emails
• Here are some of my snippets that I use, these save me a lot of time:

• Use one message instead of many

• This makes 5 notifications for the reader, creating anxiety for them! And they’ll be slower to respond. Instead, do this:

• DO NOT send messages saying ‘thanks’ or ‘understood’. USE EMOJI’s.
• This is one of my pet peeves, it is so annoying and is dreadfully inefficient.
• The reader is sent a notification, they then stop what they’re working on, go to read the message, just to see it says ‘thanks’. How irritating. Use the bloody emoji, please.

• For habits you want to build, try and make them part of a routine - with time, this will help habits to hopefully become semi-automatic. E.g. it’s much easier to hit the gym if you have a set time each day to go, and don’t have to plan when you go each and every day.
• This psychology was made famous by James Clear in Atomic Habits: Cue -> Routine -> Reward. The same logic that applies to shitty things like smoking/drinking can also be applied to things that will change your life, like reading/physical activity
• Block out time for the things most important to you. For me, i block daily time for my non-negotiables:
• Reading
• Walking Poppy
• Gym/physical activity each day
• A good breakfast to start my day

• I generally try to avoid the news. It’s mostly negative. I make sure not to be ignorant, so I catch the daily headlines in a 2-min alexa summary, but don’t waste your life reading/worrying about the news. I promise you - if you spent 15mins per day reading books related to your career instead of watching the news, after 1 year, you’d be 99% ahead of the competition. News = Infotainment.
• Avoid social media, it’s another massive time drain. If you want to use it, block out times in your day when you give yourself 15minute slots to just enjoy the app without feeling guilty/disturbing your work.
• Use AI & tools to get summaries on all the things related to your role - i have summaries of the FT and Tech scene delivered daily in 2min reads to my inbox

• Be the Navy Seals, not the Navy. If a CEO/Manager thinks you’re more important because you’re managing more people, they’re wrong, and you should quit. A Team of 3 A+ players can achieve more than 10 B players. Build for the very best you can find.
• Details, details, details. Micromanaging is not bad - your job as a leader is to be in the details. If you’re not in the details, you’re just acting as a Mckinsey/BCG consultant, and you’re fungible as f**k.

If you’re working with me, i expect you to be the best of the best. I expect you to push back and tell me what you think is stupid. It’s important, and we’ll all improve this way

• People do not fear change. They fear looking stupid while changing. Most resistance is not about the idea itself. It is about status. If you make change look like the obvious, winning move, people will rush to be part of it.
• Help me think > Give me answers
• Most people grow up learning to play it safe. School trains you to follow the rules, get good grades, and pick the reliable path. But starting a company isn’t safe or reliable. Once you commit, people will give you a thousand reasons why it won’t work. That’s why conviction isn’t just important at the start. It has to get stronger after you make the decision. Because if you let doubt take over, you’ll talk yourself out of the chance to build something great.
• Urgency without clarity creates panic, not progress. True urgency is calm, decisive action without the noise.
• Ideas are cheap, Execution is hard, But building…building is everything
• Hard work is a competitive advantage
• You don’t have to be smarter than the rest, you need to be more disciplined than the rest
• There’s no greater force of creativity, determination + commitment than a person undistracted by a Plan B
• Be humble. Team > individual. Wearing unbranded clothes doesn’t mean you are poor, you have a family to feed, not a community to impress. Fundraising posts < building a great product.
• Life shrinks or expands, according to your courage.

Shaun Azam