In today’s episode of The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten the topic is managing time, specifically how can founders better manage their time.

Hiten thinks the best way to manage time is to do it in a way that gives you energy.  He is strict about managing his own time and tries to focus on the high leverage things that need his attention.

Steli believes in also doing things that energize him and eliminating the things that don’t.  He likes to batch his time.  He doesn’t like to spend time in multiple meetings.

One aspect that can eat time is not saying no to things.  Hiten says it’s important to always be as helpful as possible to requests for his time and he does a lot of his responding by email.  Hiten likes to ask specific questions to the person he is emailing so they email back in specific terms.  He likes to use the email service SaneBox which allows for the prioritizing email.

Steli is also in favor of email as a way to save time from attending meetings and taking phone calls.  He said he doesn’t read an email without making a decision about it.  It’s often a case of deciding to deal with the email now, next week or never, but he advocates for making a decision at the time of reading it.

Today’s Tips:

Steli: Don’t waste time on things that aren’t necessary.  Being busy is the worst form of laziness.  If you’re super comfortable, you’re probably just fucking around.

Hiten: Treat your email responses as a spec when possible.  This allow you to reuse that information and copy and paste it whenever the situation calls for it.

What tips do you have to save time?  Hit us up on Twitter @Steli or @hnshah, or send us an email.  

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