The 80/20 Rule for Productivity and Revenue
Most founders spend 80% of their time on tasks that only produce 20% of their results. This is "Comfort Work."
Identifying Comfort Work
Comfort work is anything that feels like progress but doesn't actually move the needle.
- Tweaking the CSS of a landing page for the 10th time.
- Organizing your Trello board.
- Reading another "How to grow" article instead of actually reaching out to a user.
The Revenue-First Audit
Every single task on your to-do list should be categorized:
- Direct Revenue Action (DRA): Sending an email to a lead, publishing a product, fixing a checkout bug.
- Indirect Revenue Action (IRA): Writing a blog post, improving a feature.
- Maintenance: Updating dependencies, backups.
Rule: You cannot do Maintenance or IRA until you have completed at least two DRAs for the day.
How to Double Down
Once you find a channel that works (e.g., a specific Reddit community), stop trying other channels. Spend 80% of your time optimizing that one winning channel before diversifying.