When Taryn Uhlmann and Liza Street decided to start their Healthtech business, Ajuda, they were faced with a dilemma. Each of them already had a full-time job while managing three kids and busy family life. Their schedules didn’t allow for the long hours of brainstorming, ideation and ‘failing forward’ that you’ll typically read about in business books.
However, Uhlmann and Street refused to be deterred. They believed in their idea – a secure digital health vault where people can store their health information and access it anytime. So, they decided to build Ajuda in a way that defied conventional wisdom. By dedicating just one hour a day to their passion project to start, they were able to bring their business to life and fulfil their ambition.
Embracing Flexible Productivity
“Our story started by working in a way that may not be conventional, but worked for us as working moms,” says Uhlmann. “We started with just an hour a day. We used to drop our kids at school, and at 7.30am go and meet at the school coffee shop before I went off to my job and Liza went to her medical practice,” continues Uhlmann. “We referred to our approach as the ‘Power of an Hour’. An hour each day that eventually allowed us to turn an idea into a business.”
Flexibility has been a hallmark of Street and Uhlmann’s journey with Ajuda. “While an hour a day developed the idea into a business, once it became a business, our focus was on high-intensity work – in short, concentrated bursts to maximise our productivity,” agrees Street.
Making The Power of an Hour Work
Here are Street and Uhlmann’s learnings for making the “Power of an Hour” work for you.
Be intentional about it.
Rather than snatching a few minutes here and there as time allowed in their first year, Uhlmann and Street dedicated a full hour in their schedules to working on their business every day. After one month, dedicating one hour a day amounts to twenty hours of work on your idea. In six months, this totals 120 hours, and after a year it adds up to 240 hours. It may not have the instant gratification of 240 back-to-back hours, but by being dedicated, even a single hour a day can accumulate to a substantial amount of time and be very impactful.
2. Keep Focused.
Consider how many working hours are lost to office chit-chat, unnecessary meetings, and other distractions. Because Uhlmann and Street only had an hour together before they had to be elsewhere, they used that time to be productive. “We broke up each day in the week to focus our hour on different aspects of the business. An hour is actually enough time to brainstorm effectively, delegate tasks, conduct research or even have stakeholder meetings (for those who were willing to meet us so early!). It is actually quite incredible what you can achieve in a single hour of focused concentration,” says Uhlmann.
The short time period each day also made it easier for them to stay organised and focused on the task at hand.
3. Where possible, meet in person.
Digital collaboration has many perks, but Uhlmann and Street have found that they’re more productive sitting alongside each other. “The magic happens when we sit together without interruption and build on each other’s thinking process,” says Uhlmann. On screen, it’s easy to become distracted by pop-up notifications and emails. What’s more, dialling in from home or the office opens the door for environmental distractions too, like the disruptive sound of a child yelling, “Mooooommm!”
4. Plan ahead.
Take five minutes at the end of every meeting to plan for the next meeting. That way, you already know what you want to accomplish the next day and you can start immediately without wasting precious time.
5. Make it routine.
Knowing that you have the appointment at the same time every day makes it easier to stick to, as you’ll naturally start planning your day around your Power Hour, rather than the other way around.
“Being accountable to another person for that hour kept us committed to our daily meetings, highlighting one of the key benefits of having a co-founder,” says Street.
Traditional views of business often equate success with long hours. And while long hours are most certainly needed to launch a start-up, for Uhlmann and Street, success equally included the ability to balance work with family life and personal well-being. Their story is proof that if you prioritise your values over everything else, you will find a way that works for you. “Remember, you’re doing this for yourself,” says Street. “We don’t need to work eight hours in a single back-to-back sitting to be effective, when we can get a lot done by carving up our day into micro sessions, and still have time to be with our kids.”
