Business idea timeline exercise: count your months.
The business idea timeline exercise takes about twenty minutes, and nobody else sees the result. You list every concrete act, date each one, and find your start date. Then you count the months to today and draw a box around that number.
List the acts, not the wanting.
The business idea timeline exercise happens entirely on paper, with no stranger involved. First, list every concrete thing you did for this idea. Bought the domain, drew the logo, priced suppliers, took the course, built the page. To list what you did for your business, skip the thinking entirely. Then put a date beside each act, because a month or a season is enough.
Find your start date with the researchers' rule.
Next, find the earliest two acts that fall within twelve months of each other. The earlier one is your start date, by the same rule used for all 1,673 people. However, you will probably want to argue with the definition. Does a long conversation count, or a weekend of reading? Leave that argument alone, since a borrowed rule cannot be talked out of its answer.
Reading the gaps in your business idea timeline exercise.
Count the months to today and box it, which answers "how long have I been planning". Then add the date of your most recent act underneath. Finally, look closely at both gaps on the page. If first to last runs to years, and last to today is also long, you have drawn this book's shape yourself.
Do the business idea timeline exercise tonight.
List every concrete act for your idea and write a month or season beside each.
Find your start date, count the months to today, and draw a box around it.
From the book.
I know what some of you are going to do here, because it is what I would do. You will start arguing with the definition. Does a long conversation count? Does the weekend you spent reading count? Leave that argument alone and use the researchers' rule exactly as it stands, because the whole value of borrowing somebody else's definition is that it cannot be talked out of its answer by the person being measured.
I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start, chapter 2: The three-month window
Questions about business idea timeline exercise.
What if I cannot remember exact dates for the business idea timeline exercise?
A month is enough, and a season with a year also works.
Does reading about my idea count as an act?
Use the researchers' rule as it stands instead of arguing. The value of a borrowed definition is that you cannot talk it out of its answer.
Do I have to show the result to anyone?
No, nobody else sees the result and you send nothing. So it is the only exercise in the book you finish alone.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 2, “The three-month window”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 When did my business idea start: date the first act.
- 02 Three month window startup: what the study measured.
- 03 Failed ventures take longer: why stopping is so hard.
- 04 Business idea timeline exercise: count your months.
- 05 Clinkle startup story: three years, no public product.
- 06 Buffer pricing page experiment: strangers and a price.
- 07 Length biased sampling: what the study cannot prove.
- 08 Busywork instead of real progress: five dating traps.