The Startup Spouses

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.