The latest tool or app will only enhance what’s already there, which is why you need to create a well-oiled system

 

A giant engine in a factory fails.

Concerned, the factory owners call in technicians who arrive with bulging toolkits. None of them can work out what the problem is.

The issue persists.

One day, an old man shows up who’s been fixing engines his whole life. After inspecting it for a minute, he pulls out a hammer and gives the engine a gentle tap.

In seconds, it roars back to life.

A week later, the owners receive an invoice for his work: $10,000.

Flabbergasted, they write back asking for an itemized bill.

The man replies:

Tapping with a hammer: $1

Knowing where to tap: $9,999

There’s an app for that

Everyone has access to tools. But these tools are useless without the right system to support them.

To-do list apps, distraction-free note-taking software, Kanban-style project management tools…

Some block distracting websites. Some track your data. Some keep track of your time. Some reward you. Some threaten and punish you.

The tech battlefield is littered with millions of apps, tools, and software that claim to make us better: at work, and at life. The sheer amount of choice means it’s easy to lose an hour just scrolling and tapping between them.

Also Read: Mind your emotions: why emotional agility is the key to personal growth

The dopamine rush that comes with looking for the right tool feels so good that we end up avoiding doing the actual work.

“This is definitely The One”,

I’d tell myself excitedly in the early days of building JotForm.

One that will clear obstacles, push me through resistance, ward off overwhelm. One that will make things simple.

“FINALLY, the real work can begin!”

But before long, I’d find myself struggling with the same problem that brought me to the app store. And the voice in my head would whisper:

“Perhaps there’s something better around the corner. How about trying this?”

Repeat to fade.

And I’m not the only one.

In a world where we are constantly told to wake up at 6 am and read 100 books a year, it feels like we’re in a hamster wheel, always chasing the latest shortcut to be more productive or successful… to become the next Elon Musk.

In 2016, the global productivity software market was estimated to be worth $58 billion. Today, it’s worth TBC.

The reason this market is growing so astronomically isn’t necessarily because we need more tools. And not because companies are making ‘better’ tools, either.

It’s also because we keep giving up on the tools we already have.

We fiddle around with them, realize they’re not a magic bullet, and start looking for something else.

At JotForm, we finally learned to stick with the same small toolkit. For instance, our marketing team’s toolkit includes tools like Zapier and Calendly.

Do they work as well as they claim? Absolutely.

But only as long as we remember they are just that: tools.

Tools vs. Skills

A great chef uses sharp knives — but it’s not the knives that do the cooking.

Tiger Woods has a set of top-notch golf sticks, but they can’t win him the Ryder Cup.

A tool won’t make you productive. Without the skill to support it, a tool is useless.

But equally, if Tiger Woods were to play with a charity shop set of clubs, his performance would be poorer.

The right tools and the right skills are necessary.

It’s just that the skills need to come first

A company can invest in the latest productivity software. Roll it out with top-notch technical training. And yes, its employees will become whizzes… At using the software. They won’t become more productive.

The same goes for personal productivity. The cleverest app in the world won’t make a blind bit of difference if you don’t have an existing framework to support it with.

You need to know where to tap.

Also Read: How to stop working late and increase productivity : do your most exhausting task first

Focus first on the methodology. When that’s in place, the need for tools — if any — becomes crystal clear.

To work out where the holes in your workflow lie, strip the process back to basics. Instead of wondering which to-do list app you should be downloading next, considering the following strategies might be helpful:

1) Reduce

With an 8-hour day stretching ahead of us, we can be fooled into complacency: a sense that there’s plenty of time to get everything done.

But the truth is, humans aren’t great at estimating how long a task is going to take us. A recent study found that only 17% of the population can accurately predict how long a task will take.

We tend not to factor in the slow walk to the restroom, or the colleague stopping by for a ‘quick chat’ that drags on for an hour.

“Scheduling,” says Cal Newport, the founder of Study Hacks “forces you to confront the reality of how much time you actually have and how long things will take.”

Scheduling works differently for everyone, but the rule of thumb? Give yourself less time, not more. Instead of planning around a whole day, ask yourself:

“What would I do if I only had 10 minutes?”

This clarifies which tasks are urgent, and which are filler.

2) Assess

We’ve been conditioned to assume there’s a ‘normal’ schedule we should be following: 9 am the start, 6 pm finish, with our tasks staggered from hard to easy as the day goes on.

But we all have a different prime time: the hours when, according to your body clock, you are the most alert and productive.

So following arbitrary rules —

“If I don’t do my daily writing before 9 am, it will never happen.” or “It’s past 7 pm, so I should stop working now”

— is self-defeating.

You’ll interrupt yourself in a state of flow, or waste hours working to diminishing returns.

The alternative? Think in blocks, not hours.

Working in timed, highly-focused sprints does more than just eliminate distraction: it creates a new unit of measurement and rhythm to follow.

This will help you track your progress effectively, and set boundaries without losing flexibility.

3) Eliminate

I’ve written before about the horror story of the never-ending to-do list.

As an alternative, I suggest the ‘hunter’ strategy which forces you to ask yourself one question every day:

What can I do today that will have the most impact?

(Hint: it’s usually the thing you want to do least).

This question reframes your engagement and distribution of energy: deflect 80 per cent and focus on the 20 per cent.

As Warren Buffett remarked:

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”

Deliberate elimination is life-changing. It’s hard, which is precisely the point: it forces you to make choices.

In Essentialism, Greg McKeown summarizes:

“It’s about making the trade-off between lots of good things and a few really great things.”

Setting a goal is always the easy part

When it comes to productivity, there’s no magic bullet.

Without a system, any time spent fiddling with productivity software is just a drain on your energy and a chance to postpone the real work.

So, before installing the latest software, ask yourself:

What precisely is the problem this software is expected to solve? Not sure? Go back to square one.

What is the current workflow management process? If there isn’t one, go back to square one.

If there is one, how will the tool support it? If you can’t illustrate the exact process, go back to square one.

If you already have a tool and it’s not working, the issue is likely to lie in the system — not the tool. Go back to square one.

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Originally published on JotForm.com

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Organising hobbies into these three kinds can help you grow without losing your individuality

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Words that were hard for me to live by but in no time I saw myself as becoming Jack. Living in a foreign land, it was difficult for me to juggle between work and study and everything else that came in between. There was no time for personal growth.

I could feel that I was losing my essence by being caught up in the demands of the world; I was becoming the 21st-century workaholic that I never wanted to be.

My curiosity came to a halt and with that, so did its best friend – creativity.

Pearls are formed when the oyster is irritated by dust, and that is when I came up with an organisational trick that helped me stay happy, maintain my essence, and grow my creativity –all at the same time.

1. Money

The first kind of hobby that I needed to have was something that brought in money. A hobby that generated enough cash for me to sustain myself.

This was easy because I was already working and the best part of it was that I began seeing my work as not just work but as the first kind of hobby I needed to have.

For other working professionals, it can be their current work. For university students, it can be anything from selling items online or trying their hand out in investing and for children it can even be selling lemonade!

While people are sceptical about this one, especially college students, I personally believe that millennials are an extremely smart, rebellious and creative kind of species. They are capable of doing anything if they wanted to.

Having a hobby that generates money is the best thing ever, it keeps you both sane and happy.

2. Creative

The second one is an important one because it helps you remain creative. It really does not matter what you do as long as it makes you think creatively.

For me, it was playing chess. A game with many different possibilities which makes one think beyond the boundaries of conventional thinking. It demands a person to think out of the box (tactically and strategically) because every game, every formation, and the mindset of every opponent is different.

For others it can be anything from writing, cooking, photography, even building LEGO (actually building a LEGO is the best one which I was never been able to do)! It really does not matter what you pick as long as it requires creative thinking.

3. Pleasure

The final one is the best one, a hobby that you can derive personal pleasure from.

Mine was watching Netflix. Yes, it was a hobby that I derived immense pleasure from.

It does not have to be something that generates money or makes you think a lot. It can simply be playing sports, gardening, butterfly catching or even coin collecting.

However, be sure to assign this the least amount of time in comparison to the rest, or you would end up streaming Netflix all day.

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The funding is a follow-up to the one PrivyID has announced last year, also by Telkomsel Mitra Inovasi (TMI)

Digital identity provider from Indonesia PrivyID announces a Series A+ funding from Telkomsel Mitra Inovasi (TMI). The number of funding is not disclosed, DailySocial reported.

Previously, PrivyID has raised Pre-Series A funding led by MDI Ventures and Mandiri Capital Indonesia back in 2017. Gunung Sewu and Mahanusa Capital were also involved in the funding.

CEO of PrivyID Marshall Pribadi confirmed that the partnership will integrate PrivyID’s technology into Telkomsel’s platform. The platform, the company notes, aims to disrupt the identity verification service market with an effective medium for consumers.

“Aside from getting the basis of essential knowledge, we also will access the network of connection that the industry requires. With the partnership, we’re optimistic about having the financial inclusion and opening up digital economy potential in Indonesia,” Pribadi said.

Also Read: PrivyID is Indonesia’s answer to DocuSign, and it just raised pre-Series A funding

Some tech features that will be made available, Pribadi mentioned, include AI-based document checker, liveness detection, facial recognition, encryption infrastructure, and smart authentication gateway.

The service will provide security through a credit evaluation algorithm, combined with other methods such as digital signature and verified identity card to process users within minutes. The result of product integration is believed to accelerate financial inclusion in Indonesia.

“By having PrivyID as the collaborators Telkomsel’s product, asset, and resources, a potential innovation will emerge in the future,” said CEO of TMI, Andi Kristianto.

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Image Credit: Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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Ultimately, the goal is for women in the industry to be pictured as a CEO, and not as a ‘Woman CEO’

To those women out there who dream of building their own startup — but feel like they don’t fit the archetype because of their gender. Guess what? You do! This is my story.

No matter the gender, building a startup takes a tremendous amount of time and energy. Due to stereotypical ‘household roles’ women are expected to perform — especially in Asia — most cultures expect women to avoid time-consuming jobs. Being a startup founder in fintech certainly fits the bill.

But I am here to strongly disagree with this myth!

Women have the ability to do both through determination and perseverance – Women have succeeded in the likes of Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Arianna Huffington and even J.K Rowling. These trailblazers have set forth the development for future generations of female entrepreneurs.

Female founders may be a rare breed in a male-dominated tech industry (but I always thought to myself that if Kathryn Minshew. The Muse Founder can do it, so can I.

Also Read: Women in insurtech: How does Asia fare in this scene?

In recent years, the development of female founder groups, such as TechLadies,  has helped to foster an environment where women have direct connections to communities, mentors and other exemplary women.

But this is the big picture, and I would share a snapshot, so the ecosystem can hear some of the challenges I face as a Female Founder & CEO.

Here are some of the challenges that you could possibly face as a woman in tech

Lack of credibility

As a woman in charge in a fintech startup, it takes a bit more work to gain credibility from investors, partners and engineers.

Our gender can face tougher scrutiny so female CEOs must lead with decisiveness and directness — a soft Founder is often characterised as being too feminine.

Whatever someone feels about the person, they can always justify as being ‘because they are female’.

Objectification

Attending meetings where the other person is more interested in something else than in the product is a legitimate problem.

As it is difficult to distinguish early whether someone is genuinely interested in the product, Founders may end up wasting their time. If they do make advances, which get shut down, it gets awkward and unfortunately, it becomes difficult to keep the working relationship with the person.

After a while, I learnt to do some research about the person before scheduling a face-to-face meeting to ensure that the meetings are fruitful and productive.

Networking

People in business don’t take women seriously until they become successful, which makes building the network and team tricky.

It’s possible that when reaching out to prospective developers/ partners, the Founder may get messages asking them on a date or commenting on their looks rather than their ability to conduct business.

All this being said, there are some advantages to being a female founder.

 

But disadvantages apart here are some of the advantages of being a female powerhouse

Memorability

The biggest advantage is that being female can be memorable: it is sometimes easier to get press coverage and meetings can happen faster.

There’s also growing interested in the tech community in encouraging women entrepreneurs, which leads to opportunities to present at conferences or events.

Help from fellow women

People will usually be lending a helping hand and females often are keen to help a ‘fellow female entrepreneur’.

Unique perspective

As a female, Founders bring different skills to technology companies. They can have more empathy and be more focussed on a people-first strategy.

Combining the strength of both intuitive vision and the ingenious application of metrics that developers look for, the different approach to business can help a company build a product that people will actually want.

Also Read: Asian women outpacing men in joining billionaire ranks

It is tough being a CEO. Male or female. But it is up to the person to choose their attitude in how they manage to navigate the industry.

Male or female, both genders have their own advantages and drawbacks — and I would suggest not overplaying the ‘female’ card as it can backfire.

Ultimately, the goal is to have people to picture you as the CEO, not as a ‘Woman CEO’.

—

Val Ji-hsuan is the Founder of PolicyPal.

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If you are one of the many entrepreneurs who aspire to get beyond the “art of the start,” there are some proven principles to follow

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and founders being replaced, to their chagrin.

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or US$750,000 to US$50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. Of course, not every entrepreneur wants to tackle this challenge. According to one study a while back, only 45 per cent of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

If you are one of the many entrepreneurs who aspire to get beyond the “art of the start,” there are some proven principles to follow. In his classic book, “Second Stage Entrepreneurship,” Daniel J. Weinfurter, talks about making the leap a couple of times himself, and the perspective he gained from many years of consulting with other companies who have done the same.

I like the ten steps he outlines, which I characterise here as follows:

1. Seek major capital infusion. Very few startups are cash-rich enough to self-finance aggressive second-stage growth. They need a large infusion from venture capitalists, private equity, bank loans, or mezzanine financing. Of course, that means a new level of risk, giving up some control, and a new business plan. There is no free lunch.

2. Install a real board of directors. Most entrepreneurs are mavericks, and their passion drove their new business. But to scale the business, they need the complementary expertise, experience, connections, oversight, and new capital connections of a formal board of directors. Recruiting, compensating, and engaging the board is a critical priority.

Also Read: 13 top marketing and sales tools for entrepreneurs who want to gain more traction

3. Focus on creativity more than smashing competitors. To achieve second-stage growth you need to stay at the top of your creative game, more than a focus on beating competitors. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives. Keep delivering something new and fresh.

4. Hire more help than helpers. Smart staffing is a key step to ensure your success at the second stage. In addition to fresh products, you need people smarter than you for real help, with the right combination of skills, experience, and passion to foster and manage new growth. You don’t have the bandwidth to keep filling positions with more helpers.

5. Switch your attention from product development to sales. Second-stage growth usually requires a formal sales model, an experienced and disciplined sales team, and a well-defined process to meet your new goals and demands. These only come with the proper training, investment in tools, and focus on customer relationships.

6. Managing business growth is more than metrics. You can hire the best salespeople, have great products and define good metrics, but without decisive and innovative managers, the sales organisation will not reach its full potential. Leaders are needed to coach each salesperson, keep the team on message, and spur new growth and goals.

7. Separate marketing from sales for further leverage. In the second stage, marketing and sales are highly specialized functions. Marketing shapes the concept, branding, packaging, pricing, and positioning. Sales builds relationships, translates needs, makes proposals, and closes the deal. The skills required are complementary, but not the same.

8. Optimise the total customer experience. Successful second-stage companies often create an entire organisation devoted to one-on-one relationships with their customers, not just customer service for exceptions. Delivering a superlative experience is the only way to get truly loyal clients, repeat business, and expansion through social networks.

Also Read: UNDP partners 500 Startups to launch social entrepreneurship accelerator ImpactAim Indonesia

9. Build a winning culture and make it pervasive. In these rapidly changing times, in your own rapidly evolving company, culture will be the rudder that guides your path in a fashion that is consistent with your vision and values. Reinforce the values and operating principles with clear behaviours and guidelines to keep the culture healthy and thriving.

10. Separate management from leadership, and provide both. Leadership is the quality that inspires people to do their best every day. Management guides people in what needs to be done, by creating sustainable and repeatable systems, with education and guidance to make sure all efforts are productive. Neither is effective without the other.

Many startups are family businesses, and these don’t need to be grown into large enterprises. Yet the steps outlined here still have value in building a business that lets you enjoy the entrepreneur lifestyle, and lets you work “on the business” once in a while, rather than “in the business” 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

On the other hand, if you aspire to be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, these principles for aggressive growth to the enterprise level are absolutely required for survival. It really is a decision to grow and have fun, or die. Are you enjoying your entrepreneur lifestyle today?

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A previous version of this article first appeared on nfinitiv.

Image Credit: Franck V. on Unsplash

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