The Startup Career Accelerator is the go-to newsletter for first-time startup employees who want to navigate chaos, fast-track their growth, and land their first promotion within 12 months. Get practical advice, real-world strategies, and proven frameworks to help you thrive in high-growth, low-structure environments.
The Startup Career Accelerator Advent Calendar -> Week 1
|
7 mini frameworks to keep your momentum during the chaotic festive season December’s a juggling act with family commitments, social plans, and year-end pressure at work. All while trying to enjoy the festivities. So this month, TSCA is running 5 simple Advent Calendar style editions for ambitious startup folks. Each Monday, you’ll get 7 tiny, actionable prompts (one for each day). No fluff. No guilt. Just practical ways to stay visible, protect your energy, and end the year with momentum you can roll into January. Whats the aim:
How to use it: Skim the edition, pick 2–3 items that fit your week, and schedule them. If a day goes sideways, roll the item forward. December’s noisy. Use these micro-frameworks to create clarity in 10 minutes a day. Day 1 (Mon): Read‑the‑Room What: Do a 5‑minute pulse check on what leaders care about this week. Why: So you can aim your effort at visible, high‑impact problems for a stronger ROI. How: Skim Slack/All‑hands notes/roadmap. List 3 “what’s hot” topics (e.g., revenue risk, onboarding, incident). Pick one task you can own that directly ladders up to one of those. (Use ChatGPT to help you find the hot topics amongst all the information) Day 2 (Tue): 1‑Page Role Outline What: Clarify your decision areas, core outputs, and alignment in a one‑pager. Why: Prevents invisible work and mismatched expectations. How: Write 3 bullets per section (Decisions / Outputs / Measures). Share with your manager: “Spot gaps/overlap? Anything you’d change for Q1?” Day 3 (Wed): Weekly Stakeholder Update What: A crisp “no surprises” status for the people who depend on you. Why: Builds trust and reduces inbound pings... especially at a time where people have a lot going on outside of work. How: Use 5 bullets: Goal → Progress → Risks → Next step → Asks (if any). Keep it scannable; link depth in a doc. Day 4 (Thu): Yes‑But Prioritisation What: Accept any urgent asks while clearly surfacing the trade‑off. Why:Protects focus without sounding rigid. Depending on what industry your in, December and the end of Q4 can see people creating tasks to plug gaps or reach targets. Be careful not to fall victim to someone else's last ditch attempts to end the year well. How: “I can take X today; that moves Y to Friday, impacting Z. Should I switch?” Capture the decision in writing. Day 5 (Fri): Struggle Timer + Escalate What: Time‑box deep work before asking for help with context. Why:Shows judgment and saves the week. How: After 60–90 minutes, share: what you tried, evidence, and best next step. Ask for a decision or unblock. Day 6 (Sat): Iteration > Perfection What: Ship the smallest viable slice of value. Why: December timelines are short; momentum compounds. How: Define a 60‑minute MVP (demo, query, draft). Ship it with one question: “What would make this twice as useful?” Day 7 (Sun): Visibility Touchpoint What: Make your progress legible to the org. Why: Quiet wins don’t count. How:Post a brief recap (team channel/weekly note): “This week we shipped X, reduced Y by Z%; next we’ll ….” Tag collaborators. Over to you: Pick any two moves and make them weekly habits. That’s how trust (and promotion currency) compounds. Thats it! We hope you enjoyed part 1 of the TSCA Advent Calendar edition. Stay tune for part 2 dropping next week. Until next time…Here’s to clarity in the chaos. Hayds & The TSCA Team We share more ideas, resources, and behind-the-scenes insights across our channels: 🔗 LinkedIn 🔗 Website 🔗 Substack |
The Startup Career Accelerator
The Startup Career Accelerator is the go-to newsletter for first-time startup employees who want to navigate chaos, fast-track their growth, and land their first promotion within 12 months. Get practical advice, real-world strategies, and proven frameworks to help you thrive in high-growth, low-structure environments.
The 4 advanced frameworks you can use every day to manage stakeholders, own 1:1s, and earn bigger opportunities... fast! Hey Fellow Accelerators, As promised, we are back with part 2 of this weeks TSCA. Earlier in the week, we covered mindset and momentum moves... today we’re levelling up and breaking down how problem owners operate with stakeholders, in 1:1s, and when asking for bigger scope. So, where should you start... In order to be treated like a leader, you need to remove uncertainty...
The mindset switch and first 3 moves I used to stop being “the doer” and start being “the problem owner.” You may have noticed we missed releasing an article last week. So to make it right we are coming to you with 2 fresh editions this week and with that in mind we wanted to try our first 2 part edition. This is where we take one topic we know is causing issues for our readers right now, and go deeper than we ever have before across 2 full length articles in a week. The topic this week.......
18 Copy-paste lines that reduce uncertainty and speed up decisions. Hey Fellow Accelerators, We are following on from last weeks edition and going off script once again with this weeks edition of teh TSCA. We wanted to give you a scannable article that builds on the action tips we have shared over previous editions to the point where every line is something you can use right now. So bellow we have collected a whole bunch of useful questions, frameworks and viewpoints that you can use to have...