How to Prioritise Startup Tasks: The Three-Moves-a-Week Method

Planning · The Pythe team · Updated 2026-10-11

Founders have too many tasks. A simple way to choose the few that matter each week, by stage, with examples and a template you can copy.

Short answer: pick no more than three moves a week, and choose each one because it gets you closer to the goal of your current stage. Everything else waits. Fewer, finished moves beat a long list of half-done ones.

Why three?

Three is enough to make real progress and small enough to finish. It forces you to say no, which is the actual job of prioritising.

Pick by stage

Stage	Goal	Example moves
Idea	Find a real problem	Research, 10 interviews, one-line pitch
Validation	Prove people want it	Landing test, pilot offer, first price
Traction	Find a repeatable channel	Two channel tests, onboarding fix
Scale	Grow what works	Hire, systemise, raise

A quick test for each task

Does it move the stage goal?
Will I learn something I do not know?
Can it be done this week?
If no to all three, drop it.

Pythe picks three moves for your week from your roadmap, explains why each is there, and lets you hand any of them to an AI agent.

What should a startup founder focus on first?

Talking to customers about the problem. Until you know the problem is real, most other work is a guess.

How do I stop working on the wrong things?

Write down your stage goal and check every task against it each week. A weekly review helps.