Every dollar has a deadline
It's 11:01 AM on a Wednesday. I'm rewriting a LinkedIn post for the 4th time because it still doesn't sound right yet. I have a sales meeting in an hour and two emails to respond to.
Ping.
In comes a high priority bug report over Slack from a paying customer.
Gulp.
There are so many unique feelings that come attached to selling a product, but I find that none are more intense than trying to fix a bug on a deadline.
Think about it.
Someone paid real, hard cash for your product, and it doesn’t do what they expect it to. It’s not right, and you need to fix it—fast—even though you have heaps of other important things going on.
And if you’re a solopreneur like me, you’re the only person in the world who can do it.
Having run my business for almost 2 years, I still find bug fixes scary. Sometimes I fix them fast. Sometimes I’m up late into the night. I never know what’s coming next.
But the more times I do it, the more efficient I become at it.
So this week, I want to share with you my learned ritual for fixing high priority bugs as a solopreneur.
My ritual
Stop. Breathe. Realize this is the most important thing going on in the business right now.
Drop everything else you’re working on except for key scheduled meetings. Understand that whatever it is, it can safely wait until later.
Exhaustively journal anything about your current work that you don’t want to forget. This staves off fear that you won’t be able to resume what you’re doing later.
If you have another meeting later in the day that you must attend, set a timer to go off 5 minutes before it starts. This will free up brain space from having to remember to come out of deep work mode at the right moment. I find 5 minutes is a good amount of time to stop before a meeting and switch your mind from bug-fix mode to whatever state of mind you need to be in for your meeting. Repeat for more meetings later.
If you’re already working on another critical bug, decide which is more important. You can’t do two things at once. Communicate your timeline to both customers.
Write down everything you know and don’t know about the bug.
Work in as small steps as possible.
If you’re stuck, communicate your progress every 2-3 hours to the customer.
Explicitly write down your rationale for all root cause problems and fixes. This prevents you from blindly chasing solutions just for the sake of feeling like you’re productive.
Don’t panic.
The 10th point is King.