As entrepreneurs of early stage businesses, we all aspire to help our companies navigate the turbulent waters from idea to product market fit. But once you've achieved product market fit, a new and sometimes harder challenge often arises: scaling the business. During the scaling phase, an upside to being an early member of the company is you can play a lot of roles that add value to the organization. The downside is that if you played all these roles, you will either burnout or make yourself an impediment to scale.

I've been doing a poor job lately managing my To Do list. As a reminder I pulled out a matrix I've used as a visual reminder in the past. If something is strategic and requires my unique expertise (upper right quadrant of matrix), it should be on my To Do list. If something is tactical and does not require my unique expertise (lower left quadrant), it should be on my Not To Do List. Everything else: I'm doing only as long as it takes to train and/or hire someone else in the organization to do.

Sometimes the difference between success and failure is not found in the To Do list, but the Not To Do list.