True to the company culture at CastleWave, when time came for Rich and Ron to give me the next round of assignments, we sat down and planned. That said, there were no battles fought with flying memos, no flurries of emails, and no two-hour meetings. What we did–what has to be done–was to sit with a pen, paper, three minds, and the list of tasks at hand.

There is a giant whiteboard in the hall at CastleWave. Ron has a big one in his office, as does Rich (not to mention Rich’s little one on the other wall). There is planning software, people who work on planning, and notepads and Post-Its galore. With all of this potential for planning, how do things move forward? Simple: by prioritizing. “It’s so easy to get caught up in all the superficial things,” Rich says. The fluff has to be cut, and it has to be known to be cut. ”It doesn’t matter what mechanism–Palm Pilot, task manager, Franklin Covey, whiteboard–do it weekly and daily, if needed.” Overplanning is dangerous, but not planning can be even worse. The whole purpose of these tools is to know what needs to be done when, and what fluff needs cutting. That sort of planning empowers you. It makes tasks happen.

“It’s important that you get them out in front of you,” Ron adds, “so you can say, ‘Yeah, that’s it, I’ve got them all. I’m considering everything, seeing the full picture, and not just running after something without consideration.” In their book, Get a Life, Rich and Ron talk about something called the 80/20 principle. “Twenty percent of the effort always yields eighty percent of the results,” Rich says. “The trick is identifying the twenty.”

Young startups need life to roll forward. Life isn’t found in carefully orchestrated and thought-experimentally-tested business plans; the juice for bootstrapping comes from cash, action, and customers. “Do the things that bring the biggest fruit first,” Rich says. Brainstorming, whiteboarding, planning, pow-wowing–each of these means the same thing. You have to find what brings the biggest fruit. You do what I did with Rich and Ron. You sit down, create a task list, find the crucial twenty percent, and set your priorities from there. Nobody will be judging your business plan before permitting you to enter the entrepreneurial scene. Good, old-fashioned bootstrapping is only good when the boots fit the foot and the foot starts walking.

Rich closed his thoughts on this by talking about quarters in a Coke machine. If you’ve got four quarters and the first one doesn’t bring anything from the first machine, you don’t stick the other three in three separate machines. You feed that first one until it pays out. Prioritizing is a must. “Lots have written and talked about it,” Ron added, “but boy, it’s even more critical nowadays.”

In my life, I have got to know what constitutes my twenty percent. With everything I get up to, I would be helpless if I went in firing blindly. Poring over trivial details would be just as crippling. When you look at Rich and Ron (or any bootstrapper) and throw in their added responsibilities–family and full-time work leap to mind–it’s no wonder that they are adamant about this principle. Going through eighty percent of the motions does nothing for the momentum. Twenty percent of the effort yields eighty percent of the results. No matter how fast the world is moving, finding your twenty keeps you on pace. Perfection is nice, but success is better.