Everyone understands revenue. That’s why I use it as a forcing function. If it doesn’t earn value today, it’s not worth your weekend.
When I work with founders and teams, there’s always pressure to push value into the future. Not explicit. It’s a side effect of complex goals. We plan for big launches. We talk about features in sprints. We map months of effort to hypothetical payoffs.
But I’ve learned something simple: Everyone understands revenue.
So I ask: What can you ship today — that earns something real by tonight?
I borrowed this from a scrum master I worked with at NPR in 2011, Jeremy. He pushed me and the team to bring value into the week, and introduce the sprint. For him, it was lazy to keep giving an idea more and more budget, time, etc.
This isn’t a trick. It’s not a productivity hack. It’s survival. Great idea? Someone else has it too.
More features? No. One clean feature today beats ten half-finished ideas in two months.
Big vision? Great. But customers borrow your vision — don’t cloud it with complexity.
So I make it clear: What can you do now — that’s clickable by 3pm, usable by 5pm, and impactful before you shut your laptop?
Founders love the idea of constraints — until they start giving themselves extra time. One more day. One more tweak. One more call with a dev. I have seen this in my own side projects. The new feature will be so cool, let’s delay the launch one more month. It always turns into 2-3 months.
But let’s be honest: We all have meetings. We all have families. No one has enough hours in the day.
For me, it’s Saturday mornings at 6 a.m. That’s my window. Not because I’m grinding — but because it’s the time I’m not stealing from anyone else. I’m not asking my wife to carry the weight while I pretend to build something meaningful.
I use the word pretend (in my head) because until something generates revenue, its an idea, a glorified hobby.
So I start that block knowing: The idea must live or die today.