It’s really important to learn to prioritize work well and to be able to explain clearly why you did or did not prioritize something. You don’t have unlimited resources or time, especially in the earlier stages of building a company, so you must use it well.
学会安排工作的优先级，并能清楚地解释为什么做某件事，或者不做某件事，这一点真的很重要。你没有无限的资源或时间，特别是在公司的早期阶段，所以你必须好好利用它。
First, it’s helpful to think of new features as additive enablers or removing blockers. Enablers enable new functionality that usually makes the product more valuable or interesting. Blockers are gaps or friction that prevents a user/customer to use your product. Before building a feature, you should try to understand if the problem is truly preventing someone from using the product or a nice to have in their user experience. Growth at a company comes from investing your energy and effort on the right enablers and removing critical blockers.
首先，所有功能都应该是增加使能因素或消除阻碍因素。使能因素能够实现新的能力，通常使产品更有价值或更有趣。阻碍因素是阻碍用户使用你的产品的问题。在实现一个功能之前，你应该了解这个问题是否真的阻碍了客户使用产品，还是说仅仅提升了一些用户体验。公司的增长来自于将你的精力和努力投入到正确的使能因素和消除关键的阻碍因素。
Secondly, it’s important to consider how timely something is to build. There will always be more to build than you have the resources to do so. In the early stages, there are a lot of features that you will need to build eventually. Prioritize things that help you move the needle this week or month. You want to ask yourself if this is important to be done now or can it be done later. If you are successful at completing the project or task, does it help you achieve your higher-level goals? Also figure out if there are compounding effects to building it now and how it adds complexity or costs (e.g. more customization support).
其次，重要的是要考虑实现的时间。总会有更多的功能需要实现，并超出了你的资源能力。在早期阶段，有很多功能是你未来某个时间需要实现的。优先考虑那些能帮助你在本周或本月取得进展的事情。你要问自己，这件事是现在做很重要，还是以后来做。如果你成功地完成了这个任务，它是否有助于你实现更高层次的目标？还要弄清楚现在实现它是否有复合效应，以及它是否增加了复杂性或成本（例如需要更多的定制维护）。
For example, we launched Linear in beta with Google Logins support only since that was the fastest way to build authentication. We then moved on to other features instead of expanding authentication options. We knew that eventually, we would have to support pure email and other login methods to bring in more users and larger customers, but it wasn’t necessary to get our beta user community up and running. This lets us move faster on other features.
举个例子，我们在测试阶段推出的 Linear 时只支持 Google 账户登录，因为那是最快的授权登录方式。然后我们就去做其他功能了，而不是支持更多的登录方式。我们知道，终究某一天，我们将需要支持电子邮件和其他登录方式，以带来更多的用户和大客户，但这对于测试版上线是没有必要的。这样我们就能在其他功能上进展更快。