223. Thrive / survive 🐊
A simple matrix for spending your time well
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Links that are worth your time — they both happen to be about friends 👬
Can senior leaders make friends at work? (Answer: Maybe, but it’s hard)
Hi there 👋
Every so often, I dip my toe in the world of Twitter threads. There are a ton of great ones out there. (I only dip in my toes every so often because I can quickly get lost.) This week I came across a meta-thread from Julian Shapiro, founder of the startup marketing agency Bell Curve, which compiled some of his most popular threads from the past several months. Here is one of them:
The first item in this thread has stuck with me all week: People don’t have short attention spans — they listen to super long podcast episodes or binge hours of Netflix. They have short consideration spans. We creators and marketers have about one minute to get them hooked. But once hooked, people will stay.
Agree / disagree?
Wishing you a great week,
Kevan
Thrive or Survive: A new matrix for the way we work
When I was working with the Buffer team, we often referenced the Eisenhower matrix when talking about the types of activities that came our way. If you’re unfamiliar, the Eisenhower matrix looks like this:
Every project or task is some combination of urgent and important. The goal is to be able to identify one from the other; to work toward deleting unimportant, non-urgent work; and deliberately prioritize the important.
The matrix served us well … although, to be honest, working in a startup, almost everything felt urgent.
One of the biggest obstacles that we continually faced was making time for strategy.
Sound familiar?
It’s true for a lot of folks. In fact, there are books and books written about this problem. One book we read together at Buffer, The Four Disciplines of Execution, had the most catchy name for this tendency to get absorbed in urgent tasks. They called it the whirlwind.
What I loved about their description of the whirlwind was this:
Your work will always have some amount of whirlwind to it.
The goal is not to reduce the whirlwind to zero. The goal is to be disciplined about the amount of time you spend in the whirlwind and the amount of time you spend doing the most important tasks.
It’s with all these inputs in mind — Eisenhower, whirlwinds, etc. — that I’ve started coming around to a new way of thinking about my time. I call it Survive vs. Thrive. It looks like this:
We’re often pulled between two types of work:
Strategic vs. Ad hoc
Proactive vs. Reactive
Where do you see yourself falling on this matrix?
For me, it varies from week to week. In the past, it has varied from role to role. Of course, the top right quadrant feels the best — you’re doing work that fits into the bigger picture (strategic, not ad hoc), and you’re doing the work that you planned to do (proactive work, not reacting to whatever comes your way).
Nothing here is a hard and fast rule. For instance, there are times as a people manager when it’s useful to be reactive (sometimes to spare your team members from being the ones reacting). There are other times you’re asked to do ad hoc things because, well, startup life.
But the goal is to thrive as often as you can. Sometimes just recognizing where you’re at on the matrix is enough to re-center and take back control of your days.
Wishing you lots of thrive time this week!
About this newsletter …
Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. If you enjoy what’s in this newsletter, you can share some love by hitting the heart button at the top or bottom.💙
About Kevan
I’m a marketing exec who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I currently lead the marketing team at Polly. I previously built brands at Buffer and Vox.
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