Since February, I've been running my ISV/startup full-time. I've done a terrible job and released very little, but at the same time I've been lucky in that sales have quadrupled and I'm making more than I did at my job. And I finally have some idea what's going to happen to the company over the next 6 months or so, and a couple new products in development.
However, I've realized that to get over the current hump and be able to meet next year's goals, I'm going to need to be a lot more disciplined.
There have been a few weeks this year where I've been able to stay focused for most of the day and get a lot of stuff done -- usually I set micro-deadlines for particular features or aspects of a certain project. But that's pretty rare.
Lately, I tend to wake up and work on whatever strikes my fancy out of the available things to work on, get demotivated after a few hours, then go do something else or do administrative work/support. It's absolutely pathetic, especially compared to some of the better weeks I've had.
I've gotten better at estimating how long stuff will take and figuring out the complexity of a project before doing it, but I've had the hardest time lately setting schedules for any of my projects. Even when I have most of the project mapped out. And as a result, I wake up and burn a lot of energy trying to figure out what to work on next.
So I need a better framework for planning things out on a day-to-day/week-to-week level. I get pretty uneasy whenever I sit down to do it and never come up with anything.
Most software packages for project management seem to be extremely complicated. And a lot of books (e.g. the recent Scott Berkun one) seem to be focused on managing projects in a big company with lots of people and dependencies.
So where should I go to educate myself about this kind of thing? Is this something I really need to learn about, or am I just procrastinating by thinking about something so meta?
However, I've realized that to get over the current hump and be able to meet next year's goals, I'm going to need to be a lot more disciplined.
There have been a few weeks this year where I've been able to stay focused for most of the day and get a lot of stuff done -- usually I set micro-deadlines for particular features or aspects of a certain project. But that's pretty rare.
Lately, I tend to wake up and work on whatever strikes my fancy out of the available things to work on, get demotivated after a few hours, then go do something else or do administrative work/support. It's absolutely pathetic, especially compared to some of the better weeks I've had.
I've gotten better at estimating how long stuff will take and figuring out the complexity of a project before doing it, but I've had the hardest time lately setting schedules for any of my projects. Even when I have most of the project mapped out. And as a result, I wake up and burn a lot of energy trying to figure out what to work on next.
So I need a better framework for planning things out on a day-to-day/week-to-week level. I get pretty uneasy whenever I sit down to do it and never come up with anything.
Most software packages for project management seem to be extremely complicated. And a lot of books (e.g. the recent Scott Berkun one) seem to be focused on managing projects in a big company with lots of people and dependencies.
So where should I go to educate myself about this kind of thing? Is this something I really need to learn about, or am I just procrastinating by thinking about something so meta?