Thread by @matthewbarby

“You seem to have so much on your plate. Where do you find the time to do it all?”

I get this question a lot. While I don’t always get the balance right, I’ve learned a lot about how to approach managing your time to optimize for personal happiness & professional growth.

/1

3 Big Things: it’s really tough to take on more than three big things in your professional and personal life at any given time. My three big things right now:

1. Running the acquisition team @ HubSpot.
2. Growing Traffic Think Tank.
3. Preparing for the birth of my daughter.

/2

Your “3 Big Things” should map against the goals most important to you. Ideally, these goals will have a timeline, too. My goals include:

1. Refine and expand my leadership skills.
2. Increase/diversify my income.
3. Experience in building a business.
4. … 👇

/3

4. Be a supportive and loving father.
5. Increase the time I spend with my family & friends.
6. Make time to focus on mental wellbeing.

It’s important that all of your goals aren’t just career-focused - that’s only part of your life. And it should be treated that way.

/4

Being able to pass on interesting opportunities is one of the skills that took me the longest to develop. Sure, you can do smaller things among the big 3 (e.g. I run a podcast & publish essays on my site) but to take on a new “big thing”, I need to get rid of an existing one.

/5

A good example of this was when I decided to launch Traffic Think Tank with two co-founders. This falls into the bucket of “Big Things” (it takes up +20 hours a month). To take this on I put a complete stop to any consulting work I did, regardless of the opportunity size 🙅‍♂️

/6

A big deciding factor in what I take on relates to the level of happiness it will deliver to me. This goes back to my goals, but also whether I actually enjoy doing what I’m taking on. I realized that the only thing I liked about consulting was $$$, so it was easy to replace.

/7

🤖 I try to automate or outsource a lot of tasks that I need to do life outside of my 3 Big Things. We have m/subscriptions to food delivery, pet food, diapers, pet daycare & more. Any task where I’m not a specialist, I outsource: accounting, cleaning, laundry, etc.

/8

Family & Friends:


✅ involve family & S/O in your decision making - it impacts them.
✅ have weekly/monthly family meetings to avoid misalignment of expectation and/or personal relationship strain.
✅ book family/friends time into your work calendar so it's blocked out.


/9

You MUST be well organized.

🗒️ Use project management software for managing everything you do (including personal tasks). I’m a big fan of @todoist for simplicity.

+ review time spent above.

🗒️ write a 1-page doc for all new ideas to validate & formulate plans better.

/10

Final Advice:

🧠 Make time for mental wellbeing & learn to switch off (completely) for periods of time.

This is something I’ve never been good at and am actively focused on doing better this year. Of all the things I’ve done this has had the greatest impact on happiness.

/end