Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Starting a new venture comes with its own challenges, one of which is managing the overwhelming list of things to do. Traditional to-do lists, while helpful, can often feel endless and unstructured. Many friends have told me on multiple occasions that even if they dedicated ten hours a day working on their startup, they would run out of things to do within the first two hours. After all, that’s the hardest part of being an entrepreneur — paving your own path without someone directing you.
This is where the concept of Perpetual Actionable Items, or PAIs, steps in. This framework helps simplify your business operations by zeroing in on continuous, high-impact activities that drive growth and clarify daily objectives. The end goal is to be able to subconsciously come up with sub-tasks that contribute to the core value drivers of your business.
Related: Is Your To-Do List Overwhelming? Here’s What You Need to Do.
Understanding perpetual actionable items
Unlike everyday tasks that might be one-off or reactive, PAIs are core activities that consistently drive your startup’s growth and need sustained attention. These are the tasks that when executed regularly, fundamentally strengthen your business’s foundation and push it toward long-term success.
To illustrate, while a typical task might be “Send an email to X client,” a PAI would be “Onboard clients.” While this structure might seem obvious, in the long run, it forces you to develop a subconscious understanding of different elements in your business.
Related: Find a To-Do List Strategy That Works for You
Identifying your startup’s core trajectories
To effectively implement PAIs, you first need to identify the critical areas or trajectories that are pivotal to your startup’s success. Here are a few reflective questions that can aid in identifying your PAIs:
- What activities, if stopped today, would significantly impact our growth or survival?
- What are the ABCs of our business?
- Who do we answer to?
- Which areas of our business are directly linked to our competitive advantage?
- Where do we see the most significant gaps between our capabilities and our aspirations?
Developing Your PAI list
To implement PAIs effectively, start by identifying and prioritizing ongoing activities that will significantly impact your startup. Break down each PAI into actionable steps for clarity and ease of execution.
Set clear metrics to measure the success of each PAI, like the number of new clients or campaign engagement rates, allowing you to track progress and make necessary adjustments. Regularly review these items to ensure they remain aligned with your business goals, choosing a review frequency that suits the pace of your operations.
Finally, document and visualize your PAIs using tools that keep them accessible and top of mind for your team. This ensures everyone understands their roles and the importance of these tasks in driving the business forward.
Integrating PAIs into daily operations
Once you’ve defined your PAIs, integrating them into the daily operations of your startup is crucial for moving from theoretical to actionable steps. Start each day by reviewing PAIs with your team, setting a focused tone and prioritizing these crucial tasks. Encourage your team to tackle PAI-related tasks early in the day when their energy is at its peak, enhancing productivity and ensuring that key business areas receive the necessary attention.
Utilize project management tools such as Asana, Trello or Monday.com to efficiently organize, track and manage your PAIs. Automating reminders and updates can keep the team aligned and proactive, maintaining momentum and ensuring consistent attention to these important tasks.
Regularly communicate the significance of PAIs to your team to link their daily efforts to the broader business goals and their impact on the company’s success. Hold frequent check-ins focused on PAIs to discuss progress, address challenges and brainstorm improvements to ensure that these critical tasks are effectively executed and remain at the heart of your team’s daily activities.
As your business evolves, be ready to adapt your PAIs to new conditions and encourage team feedback to refine these tasks. Recognize and reward team members who excel in executing PAIs to encourage continued focus and dedication. Implementing incentives for achieving milestones can create a sense of ownership and urgency.
Related: Three Ways to Build a To-Do List That Actually Keeps You On Task
Case Study: Expanding the advertiser base for an ad network
- Background: An ad network aiming to significantly expand its advertiser base to increase revenue and market presence.
- PAI Implemented: Continuously recruit and onboard new advertisers.
- Action Steps: Develop targeted marketing campaigns to attract potential advertisers, host webinars and industry events to raise awareness and streamline the onboarding process to facilitate easy integration for new advertisers.
If you can’t explain your business to a complete outsider without them fully grasping what you do, you don’t know your business either. After implementing PAIs, a person operating an ad network would be able to describe the operations of the business using a few simplistic sentences.
The primary objective of this framework is to simplify your vision. Next time you wonder what you need to do going forward, you have an ultra-minimalistic list to refer to that should almost make your work life sound like child’s play.
