Busywork instead of real progress: five dating traps.
Busywork instead of real progress shows up when forty recent entries are the same act repeated. It is one of five problems you may meet while dating your clock. Each has a simple fix, and none of them changes the core result.
When dates blur or only one act appears.
First, your acts may carry no dates at all. In that case, use file dates, email receipts and card statements. If all of that fails, write the year and accept a margin of a year. Second, there may be only one act on the page. Then your process has not started by the paper's definition, and that is worth knowing.
Spotting busywork instead of real progress.
Third, the list runs to forty items, all of them recent. That looks like health, but it often is not. So ask whether those items are different kinds of act or one kind repeated. Forty entries of reading, buying and planning is one act performed forty times. In short, that pattern is busywork instead of real progress, or planning disguised as progress.
A large number, then nothing changes.
Fourth, the number may be eleven or fourteen years. Facing how long I have waited is hard, but look at it for five minutes before rounding down. However, its size is not a verdict on you or your character. Finally, you may feel the jolt and change nothing. So leave the page somewhere you will see it tomorrow morning.
Guard against busywork instead of real progress tonight.
Mark each list item by kind, so repeated reading, buying and planning stand out.
Leave the page with your boxed number where you will see it tomorrow morning.
From the book.
The number is large enough that you want to shut the book. Eleven years. Fourteen. Look at a number like that for five minutes before you round it down. The size of it isn't a verdict on you, or on what kind of person you turn out to be. It's the price of a mechanism nobody ever explained to you, and it's the reason there are nine more chapters after this one.
I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start, chapter 2: The three-month window
Questions about busywork instead of real progress.
How do I spot busywork instead of real progress on my list?
Check whether recent items are different kinds of act. Forty entries of reading, buying and planning is one act done forty times.
What if my number is wrong by a year?
Nothing in this chapter changes if your number is out by twelve months. So accept a year's margin and keep going.
What if I only have one act on my list?
Then your process has not started by the paper's definition. The idea you have carried is still one evening old.
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.