Josh Payne's Unstructured Thoughts

I came to HubSpot about 14 months ago. It was a big change for me professionally and personally. At the time of the change, I wrote a bunch of posts on this blog recounting the job search process and my adjustment to life outside of IBM and to a growing startup. With a full year under my belt, I gave some thought to the biggest changes and adjustments. The conclusion I came to was that I now have so much more control over the course of each and every day – and its incredibly liberating and satisfying. Its not that big bad controlling IBM didn’t give me autonomy — it did. It gave me a remarkable amount of control over big decisions for the products I worked upon. This feeling of control and liberty came more through the mechanics of no longer needing to coordinate and collaborate with the web of IBM colleagues and peers. Here are two examples

1. Meetings.

My volume of meetings went from 6 – 9 hours of daily meetings (primarily conference calls) at IBM to . . . well, most typically 15 minutes a day. Maximum at HubSpot, I have 3 meetings in a day. Whereas at IBM there are all sorts of status meetings and coordination meetings and pre-meetings and review meetings, at HubSpot, I have none of them. This is a good thing not because meetings are de facto “bad”. Its more an indicator that the nature of my job changed entirely. I went from a place where I was keeping a manager’s schedule to a place where I was keeping a maker’s schedule. There is now at HubSpot a clear expectation and an actual opportunity through the course of the day for me to actually . . . do stuff. I actively contribute to the development of the product. There’s a 15 minute status meeting each day with my team, as part of Scrum, which serves a clear purpose. Its brief and done standing up. Other than that, its not uncommon for me to go the rest of the day meetingless — and its an absolute joy.

It is a joy because I truly feel productive. I feel like I’m making a difference at HubSpot. This really came home for me today when I re-skimmed Marc Andreesen’s Guide to Personal Productivity. Not only do I try to follow his index card trick, but I fell into his suggestion to not keep a schedule. Now I don’t do either of these things completely, but I’m almost entirely in control of my day now. I can focus on the things I think are most important for my job and for HubSpot. Not what the other people need and want. And it is incredibly satisfying.

2. Email.

With a modern startup, I have left the tyranny of the Lotus Notes/Microsoft Outlook inbox behind. Once I adjusted to the gmail threading approach to the inbox, my efficiency with email skyrocketed. Whereas previously I had frequently been declaring email bankruptcy, now I’m in the free and clear with my inbox by 10AM. I shoot for inbox zero and get there occasionally. But more importantly there isn’t the nagging feeling of hundreds of unknown, unread emails lurking on my machine. Again, the email isn’t exerting control over me, I’m in control over it and its satisfying.

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