I used to measure my week in hours. Now I measure it in decisions

For years, a good week was a long week.

If I'd worked a lot of hours, I'd done well. If I'd worked until late, even better.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to notice the flaw.

Hours are easy to count

Hours have a great advantage. They're easy to count. You started at nine, you stopped at midnight, you know exactly how virtuous you've been.

They also have a huge flaw. They don't tell you whether anything changed.

You can spend twelve hours answering emails and end the week exactly where you started. Busier, more tired, and with the feeling of having earned something. You haven't. You've just been present.

Last year a lot of my emails went out in the early hours. I won't pretend that was a strategy. It was a habit that looked like commitment.

Busy is how a week feels. Decided is what it leaves behind.

Late hours lie

Late hours have a special talent. They make you feel like you're working hardest exactly when you're thinking worst.

This is where having a partner helps. Yeray is my counterweight. Not because he works fewer hours, but because he reads my decisions at a different moment from the one I made them in. Sometimes that's all a decision needs: someone looking at it in daylight.

I suspect more hours don't just give you diminishing returns. At some point they give you negative ones. You start undoing your own work. Or someone else has to.

What I measure now

So I'm trying something different. At the end of the week, instead of counting hours, I ask what got decided.

Not what got done. Decided.

A price we stopped discussing. A request we answered clearly, yes or no. A client we chose to keep, or not. Something we'll never have to think about again because now there's a rule.

Some weeks the list is long. Some weeks it has one line. A few weeks it's empty, and those are usually the weeks with the most hours.

That last part was the uncomfortable discovery. The weeks I felt most productive were often the ones where I decided least. I was too busy to decide anything.

This isn't a productivity trick. I'm suspicious of those. It's closer to a change in what I think my job is.

In a small company, the founder's real job isn't doing the most work. Anyone can do work, and some of it should be done by someone else. The job only the founder can do is decide. What we sell, what we don't, who we work with, what we'll stop doing.

No investor is setting our pace. That's the point of having none. But it also means nobody else will force the decisions. If I don't make them, the hours will make them for me. Badly.

For years, a good week was a long week.

Now a good week is one I don't have to decide again.

P.S. This post was written during the day. I checked.