Framing Your Weeks

There are maybe four writers who give me conflicting feelings. I read their stuff and simultaneously think “I love this so much” and “I’m so jealous I didn’t write this.”

Tim Urban’s the OG of the list.

He wrote a post a few years ago visualizing a life in weeks, and the framing + visual has stuck with me. We’ll use a similar framing below.

Our founders struggle with time. It’s hard to find time to work on your startup, and, once you do, it’s hard to figure out what to use that precious time for.

Last week during 1x1s I heard, four times, “I just don’t know where my time went.” So, with a little help from Tim’s visual framing, let’s look at your weeks.

Here’s a week. Each circle represents an hour. You’ve got 168 of them.

We’ll start by assuming 8 hours of sleep a night. So, you’re down 56 (great) hours. Sleeping circles are probably the highest value circles you can have (although remember that’s coming from a guy with a toddler).

Next, we’ve got your day job. Let’s call that 40 hours, although your mileage may vary. These are useful circles — they pay the bills.

Next, we’ve got dedicated family and friends circles. Let’s say you get two of these a day, on average. That’s a great number.

Next, exercise. One hour a day would be great.

Finally, another 11 hours for meals outside of working hours.

OK! That was a lot of Canva circle filling — so, what’s the point?

The framing.

Every circle is an investment.

Because it helps me, I also think about every circle as a version of Brian and the impact that particular Brian makes on the overall version.

So, “Workout Brian” is great. He only needs one circle a day (out of 24). And with that circle, he creates enormous impact. Workout Brian makes me eat better, sleep better, feel better, look better, think clearer, live longer. Workout Brian is as additive as you can possibly get. Investing a circle a day in him is a no brainer. It’s criminal not to. If I spend 0.4% of my week working out (one circle a day), I’m helping myself dramatically.

Conversely, there’s Phone Brian. I didn’t fill in the circles, but pop open your phone, scroll to Screen Time, and look at your 7 day average. If it’s 4 hours a day, like most people, then you just invested 28 circles in Phone You.

Is Phone Brian a good investment?

Oh good heavens, no. Phone Brian is horrible to all the other Brian’s. Phone Brian makes overall Brian feel worse, disconnects me from reality, kills sleep, kills creativity. Phone Brian is a disaster. He steals and takes but gives nothing. When you see the circles he takes up, you realize he must be stopped.

You probably noticed something else from the circle visualization.

After all the essentials, there are still 40 circles left (not counting Phone time). 40 hours. That’s probably way more than you expected.

And, maybe your work’s a bit more demanding and you only have 30 circles leftover. Still! You’ve got plenty of circles to invest.

The “investment” framing should help you decide how to use them.

Let’s say you decide to spend 8 circles a week on your startup. The goal is to invest in circles that’ll compound - that’ll make the biggest impact for the time spent.

For early stage folks, I think of circles in two ways - proactive and reactive. You’re either out finding new dots, or you’re spending time connecting them. Your differentiator, especially early, will be having different dots than everyone else. If you know stuff about customers no one else does, it’s simple to build something better than anyone else can.

So, invest your eight circles accordingly. Maybe five circles speaking with customers or building systems to get new dots, two circles on connecting those dots and one circle, one hour a week, just sitting at your desk with a blank piece of paper and no distractions putting it all together. You can hold one of your 168 for something that important.

You want your startup circles to be unique - to be spent on things other startups ignore. The hard stuff. Early on, that’s always the proactive stuff.

I always call the customer interview circles “Sherlock Brian,” because I’m a nerd. But it makes it fun. Investing eight hours a week in Sherlock Brian leads to enormous benefits with any business I ever work on. No one else spends that much time with customers. Sherlock Brian rivals Workout Brian for overall impact.

The other big impact for circle visualization for me is the “relax” circles - the time for doing things I truly enjoy. If I leave 10 hours for that, I should have plenty of time to watch shows I genuinely love like The Bear, or time to walk Rubes or read or extra time to read books to my son. That’s all great stuff.

If it feels like I don’t have time for that, I do an audit and see what’s stealing my quality off-time. Spoiler, it’s the phone.

You’ve got 168 circles a week. Invest them wisely.