The Startup Spouses

Instead of working for the weekend, we find ourselves working on the weekends. It just seems to be the time we’re able to get the most done. And work seems more fun on the weekend. During the week, Kris is focused on his day job and has trouble changing gears; I struggle with working alone and motivating Monday through Friday. When we’ve planned to commit a weekend to working on our business, our productivity skyrockets and we’re able to reach milestones. If we looked at why we’re more productive on the weekends, I would attribute it to:

•  No distractions. When we plan to work on the weekend, we ignore any calls and requests to go out. During the regular work week, it is harder to avoid all distractions (i.e. boss calling) and sometimes they’re welcome (i.e. mom calling - phew, I can take a break). 
• Incentives. We try to compensate for staying in on the weekend by cooking nice meals and drinking wine. We plan our menus early Friday and stock up at Whole Foods for the weekend. Monday through Friday, it feels too indulgent (nevermind time-consuming and expensive) to think about food so much. And it would perhaps be concerning if we started in with the wine on Monday afternoon. 
• Interaction. Fueled by wine and devoid of distractions, we’re able to talk and brainstorm freely. While we work 3 ft away from each other, we don’t often have extended periods of time during which we can explore and plan. 
• Scheduled breaks. On weekends, we take breaks when we want, either to watch a movie or workout. There is more pressure during the week to mimic the 9 - 5 schedule, even though our schedule is fairly open. 

Given the success we have working on the weekends, it’s worth experimenting and trying to implement some of the “weekend” tricks during the week. 

I had an appointment today for a physical, which I haven’t done in over three years. As I waited in the waiting room and then the exam room for two hours, I had plenty of time to think about how life’s necessities get in the way of work. This week, in general, I lost a lot of time. We had an accountant appointment Tuesday, after which I had to sadly revisit all our receipts from 2007. Then I realized last night while writing/watching the Daily Show that the battery in my laptop died. Which means I’ll spend another afternoon this week at the Apple store. I certainly don’t mind visiting the cute guys over at the Genius Bar, but it’s another day lost.

My rant about getting all these boring necessities out of the way is significant to the self-employed because we think about time differently. Now I schedule appointments during the day because I hope I will have more options since I don’t work 9-5. I make time to do organizational tasks, like filing or sorting bills. I also spend a lot of time during the day preparing healthy meals and exercising. While it is nice to pay extra attention to myself and attend to oft-neglected tasks, it also keeps me from my main work.

If I worked in an office environment, I would have tried to do my taxes online, and upon failing, given up and hoped that I never got caught for tax evasion. I would never go to the doctors or any other appointment, which explains why it’s been so many years since I’ve been in the first place. I would ignore my mail and let it accumulate until we have people over, at which point we’d hide it in a box to never be seen again. I would exercise less, eat unhealthily, and save chores for the weekend. Sure, there are those people who have busy jobs, and also manage to keeps their lives in perfect order. I think they’re just evidence that androids are living amongst us unnoticed.

I like that my schedule affords me the opportunity to get more life chores done and be more organized than I have been in a while. But it creates a false sense of productivity. Getting a physical is a item to check off the to-do list, but spending three hours at the doctors does not get one closer to her professional goals.

It’s officially been three months since we started working on our own. We decided that even the self-employed should not be immune to the quarterly review, so we took a cold, hard look at our progress so far. And, yes, we did need drinks after.

Overall, we’ve learned a lot, made some measurable progress, didn’t get sick of each other, and had only had two fights. We also missed numerous deadlines, changed focus midway through, and still haven’t figured out how to maximize productivity. In summary, it’s been a moderate success, but we’ve got a long way to go. The most valuable part has been what we learned, though.

Learnings:

• Set a routine. It’s tempting to take advantage of a flexible schedule and easy to fall into college-days habits, like pulling all-nighters to finish projects and sleeping in the next day. However, we found that we were most productive when we established a routine and followed it. You can break from the routine after it’s established, but it takes at least a month to make it stick.
• Don’t always “divide and conquer”. When working with a partner (of any kind) it’s tempting to divide up tasks and work on them separately, but we found that when working on our own we were slower. There is more energy and accountability when we work on tasks together than when working separately. Moving forward, we’re going to try to build in more time when we work together to finish a task.
• Don’t wait for perfection. This is easier said than done. When we started, we said that we were going to operate in the rapid-prototyping mode, and just create content and get a site up. I agree with this concept in theory, but when I’m writing content I’m reluctant to let it go before I’m totally satisfied with it. Which may never happen. I’m trying to learn to let go and just get stuff done.
• Establish smaller, measurable weekly goals. Yes, I’m trying to avoid using SMART goals here, but you get the idea. We began in January with a very lofty project plan that mapped out major milestones over the course of five months. While we did break down the milestones into tasks, it proved to be difficult to work towards far-off goals. Now, we’re trying to focus on short-term tasks (weekly) with less attention to the long-term goals. For example, this week we will create five new web pages with content.
• Have realistic expectations. This has implications all over the place, but since this is about couples working together, I’m going to focus on having realistic expectations of your partner. We made the mistake of overpromising what we could deliver, and then believing each other’s promises, which is really hilarious. You know your partner better than anyone, and you know that he (or she, it definitely goes both ways) is full of shit most of the time. Why would you believe him when he says he’ll put up a website in four hours, or write a whole e-book over the weekend (ok, I did that)? It’s a burden, for sure, to figure out what’s realistic for your partner to achieve, but let’s face it - you know better than he does. If you start to establish realistic expectations of him, and explain why, over time he will start to be better able to do so for himself. (And, yes, the two fights were because of this.)
• Get an accountabilibuddy. Yes, I am stealing that term from South Park, and yes, I’m talking about finding someone to be accountable to. Be honest about what you struggle with the most. Maybe it’s focusing for more than five minutes without checking Facebook, finishing tasks on time, or communicating when you’ve fallen behind. Whatever it is, pick something that you want to work on, and then make yourself accountable to someone. It can be a colleague, a friend, your mom, it doesn’t matter, as long as you check in with that person regularly about how you’re working on your chosen challenge.