These five prompts cover the core analytical needs of founder time tracking: calculating your current ratio, checking for multi-week drift, identifying the biggest time drains, designing a better week, and diagnosing a stuck category.
Each one is copy-paste ready. Fill in your own data where indicated by brackets.
Prompt 1: The Weekly Ratio Calculator
Use this every Friday after logging your week. It’s the core weekly review prompt.
Here are my time logs for last week. Each entry is one day.
I'm a [seed / Series A / pre-seed] stage founder.
My target ratio is [50% Build / 30% Sell / 20% Operate] or adjust for your stage.
[Paste your weekly logs here — even rough notes work]
Please:
1. Estimate my actual Build / Sell / Operate split for the week
2. Tell me how far I am from my target in each category (in percentage points)
3. Flag any single category that's significantly off
4. Suggest one specific change to protect or shift next weekWhat good output looks like: A clear ratio calculation, a specific variance figure for each category, and a concrete calendar suggestion — not vague advice, but something like “protect Thursday morning as a Build block.”
Prompt 2: The Multi-Week Drift Detector
Use this once a month after you have four or more weeks of data. Catches the slow drift that weekly snapshots miss.
Here are my time logs across [X] weeks.
I'm targeting 50/30/20 Build/Sell/Operate at the seed stage.
[Paste logs week by week]
Please:
1. Calculate my ratio for each individual week
2. Identify any category that has been consistently above or below target
for two or more weeks in a row
3. Flag the direction of any trend (is Operate creeping up? Is Build eroding?)
4. Tell me what this multi-week pattern would suggest about a structural problem
in how I'm organizing my timeWhat good output looks like: A week-by-week table, a clear identification of any trending categories, and a hypothesis about the structural cause — not just “you’re doing too much Operate” but “your Operate hours spike consistently in weeks with hiring activity.”
Prompt 3: The Operate Drain Identifier
Use this when your Operate ratio is consistently above target. Identifies what’s specifically driving it.
Here are my last [3-4 weeks] of time logs. My Operate ratio has been
running at approximately [X]% against a 20% target.
[Paste logs with any notes about what was in each day]
Please:
1. Identify which specific activities appear most frequently in my Operate logs
2. For each activity, estimate its approximate weekly time cost
3. Rank these activities by how easily they could be delegated, batched,
or eliminated — given that I'm a [stage] founder with a team of [size]
4. Identify the single highest-leverage thing I could stop doing personallyWhat good output looks like: A ranked list of Operate activities with estimated time costs and a clear delegation or elimination recommendation for each.
Prompt 4: The Week Design Prompt
Use this on Sunday evening to design the coming week’s calendar around your target ratios.
Here's a summary of my last four weeks of time tracking:
[Paste ratio summary or weekly logs]
My targets are 50% Build, 30% Sell, 20% Operate.
Here are my known commitments for next week:
[List fixed meetings, calls, or obligations]
Please design a weekly time structure that:
1. Protects my Build ratio at approximately 50%
2. Fits around my fixed commitments without moving them
3. Batches Operate work into specific windows rather than spreading it
4. Identifies any commitment I should consider declining or rescheduling
to protect my ratio
Give me the result as a day-by-day structure — not a minute-by-minute schedule,
but a morning/afternoon breakdown of what each period should be used for.What good output looks like: A Monday-to-Friday structure with morning and afternoon designations, specific notes about which commitments are compatible with deep work preservation, and at least one concrete suggestion for protecting Build time.
Prompt 5: The Stuck Category Diagnosis
Use this when one category is chronically below target despite your efforts to improve it. Gets at the systemic cause.
I've been trying to increase my [Build / Sell] time for [X] weeks.
My target is [X]% but I consistently land at [X]%.
Here are my logs from the past month:
[Paste logs]
Please:
1. Identify what's displacing my [Build / Sell] time — which specific activities
are crowding it out
2. Tell me whether this looks like a scheduling problem, a delegation problem,
or a priority problem
3. Suggest two or three structural changes that would be likely to move the
needle — not general advice, but specific changes to how I organize my days
4. Flag any patterns that suggest I'm systematically undervaluing my own
[Build / Sell] time in favor of more visible or urgent workWhat good output looks like: A specific diagnosis of what’s crowding out the target category, a classification of the problem type (scheduling vs. delegation vs. priority), and concrete structural recommendations.
How to Get More From These Prompts
The more specific your input, the more specific the output. A log that says “Operate — finance stuff and some hiring things” produces weaker analysis than one that says “Operate — 2 hours reviewing contracts with counsel, 1.5 hours interviewing candidates for design role, 1 hour with accountant on quarterly close.”
You don’t need this level of detail every day. But on the days when you add one sentence of context to your daily log, the AI’s analysis downstream gets meaningfully better.
Run Prompt 1 this Friday. That’s the starting point for everything else.
For the full system behind these prompts, the Founder Time Triangle guide explains the framework, and the how-to article walks through setting up the daily logging habit.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Do these prompts require a specific AI tool?
No. These prompts work with any general-purpose AI — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or any similar tool. Copy the prompt, fill in your own data where indicated, and paste it into your AI conversation. No special integrations or subscriptions required beyond a basic AI account.
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What if I only have one or two days of data — is it worth running these prompts?
The ratio calculation prompt (Prompt 1) is useful with as little as three days of data — it gives you a rough baseline even with limited input. The pattern prompts (3 and 4) need at least two to three weeks of data to surface meaningful signals. Start with Prompt 1 this Friday using whatever you have, and build from there.