Here’s an ultra-quick thought in something that has helped me do work that’s both meaningful for the company and allows me to explore things I want to test the value of.
- Focus 80% of your effort on what works and whatever your team has agreed on doing.
- Save 20% to explore low-lift versions of untested ideas.
You know those things you have a good gut feeling about but no concrete evidence to support why they're worth investing more into?
Around 80% of the time I need to make sure my budget and focus is invested into the things that work and that we're working towards as a company.
The other 20% is for lower-priority things or things I want to experiment with.
For example, lets say you want to start a newsletter but your company is not quite there yet ready to invest in full-time help or more budget for freelance help.
You could start super small with a monthly email you either do yourself or get help from a freelancer for writing or design. This email project should take no more than roughly 20% of your time. I’d even say no more than 15% so you leave a 5% to 10% sanity buffer for the last-minute “super important” stuff that always pops up.
Over time, you'll begin to gather insights on how the newsletter is performing to (hopefully) help you make your case.
This was just a rough example though.
You can apply this to anything you've been wanting to do by finding a simple low-effort, low-cost way to test the idea.