Editor’s Note: We’ve been asking Boston business and tech leaders how they work, meaning how they structure their days and how they stay productive. Click here to read answers from Jason Jacobs, Bijan Sabet, Tim Rowe and Jeff Fagnan and enjoy Mike Troiano’s answer below.
How I work. Tough one. As others have said, it doesn’t feel like I’ve quite cracked the code on how to be the best me I can be. On a great day my life feels incredibly full and rich. On a bad one it feels like a series of decisions on whom to disappoint.
For starters, I am not an early riser. I’m a night owl, and too often stay up later than I should doing things that don’t add much value in the light of day. The good news is I have 4 kids, which usually means we’re up around 6:30 whether we like it or not.
I grab the iPad on my nightstand do a quick triage on e-mail, Twitter, SMS (Google Voice, great if for no other reason that it’s accessible across devices.) I respond to anything time-urgent right from bed, and leave anything in my inbox that needs to be attended to later.
By 7:15 I’m usually onto my extensive personal grooming regimen (this look doesn’t just happen, people…), and by 7:30 I’m downstairs dumping grounds out of the Keurig and setting up a new coffee. I grab a smoothie and whatever other lower carb snack is in the fridge, then head out to the car for a commute through the burbs.
More often than not I have a team meeting that starts at 8:30, and I try to really be present for that meeting (either Sales Status, Marketing Status, or Exec Ops.) After that I’m usually booked back to back through the day, in meetings I try to a) focus on, and b) cut short wherever possible to free up some “work” time. In the gaps I’m in a constant battle to beat my Inbox of non-triage-able open action items toward zero (I never get there.) My new thing is walking for the meetings whenever I can, inspired by the ever-taunting Nike Fuel band. But mostly the day is dedicated to people who want to connect with me, for whatever reason.
At 5:30 or so the scheduled day ends, and after that I decide who to connect with. I shoot for a family dinner 2 nights during the week, and on those nights I head home early, have or make dinner, and help get the kids down. The other nights I have “a thing,” drinks, or dinner with a person or people worth spending time with. For me more business value gets created between 6:30 and 9:30pm than it does between 6:30 and 9:30am, but that might just be because the nature of the work I do is idea rather than analysis-driven. After that I head home, work on whatever output is important during the next 48 hours, and head to bed.
Every night I try to read one chapter of whatever book I’m reading. And I try to avoid “business books” in favor of content that enriches my life or understanding of the world in some other way. In that same spirit… if it’s 11:00, and anything with Pacino, DeNiro, or Brando is on… I’m going to be up until it’s over.
One other thing that might be useful to folks… At the start of each quarter, I make a list of my most important priorities in the current quarter. I put those things on a Mac ‘Stickie” and leave them on my desktop. My current Stickie:
- Scalable Sales Engine
- Pricing Model Overhaul
- Actifio 2.0 / Actifio.com
- Product Marketing Model
- Make “Copy Data” Real
- One Marketing Team
When I do get breaks in the day, I spend the time going through that list, from 1 to 5, asking whether there’s something I can do right now to advance that goal. Starting from the top down… If there is, I do it right then. If not, I go to the next thing, until I can do something else.
