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What Is Your Working Capital?
In business, working capital is simple math: current assets minus current liabilities. It’s what you have available to operate — the liquidity that keeps the lights on between when you pay for something and when you get paid.
Mismanage it, and you die. Not dramatically. Quietly. You just run out of room to move.
I’ve been thinking about working capital as a metaphor for everything else we manage — our time, our relationships, our ideas, our energy.
The Three Buckets
Things you owe. Commitments you’ve made. Promises, explicit and implied. The email you said you’d send. The favor you accepted that now needs returning. The project you started and haven’t finished. These are your liabilities. They accrue interest.
Things you’re owed. Reputation. Trust. The goodwill you’ve built by showing up, delivering, being useful. These are your receivables — but they’re not guaranteed. They depreciate if you don’t maintain them. And you can’t always collect.
Active inventory. The ideas you’re working on right now. The relationships you’re actively tending. The projects in motion. This is your current work — and like real inventory, it costs something to hold. Ideas sitting too long go stale. Relationships untended drift.
Why This Matters
Most productivity advice focuses on throughput: do more, faster. GTD your way to inbox zero.
But working capital isn’t about speed. It’s about balance. About knowing what you owe, what you’re owed, and what you’re actively holding — and managing the gaps between them.
You can be incredibly productive and still go bankrupt. Ask anyone who burned out delivering on promises they should never have made.
What This Newsletter Is
I’m building things. A few software products, some content, a small company called SomeShovels. This newsletter is where I think out loud about the process.
Not advice. Not a system. Just observations from someone trying to manage his own working capital without going broke — financially, energetically, or otherwise.
Some posts will be about pricing and value (a recurring obsession). Some will be about building in public. Some will just be half-formed ideas I’m turning over.
If that sounds interesting, stick around. If not, no hard feelings — we’re all managing limited inventory.
— Adam
Notes for Adam:
- ~500 words, sets up the metaphor without over-explaining
- Establishes the tone: honest, not guru-ish
- Mentions SomeShovels but doesn’t depend on it
- No commitment to posting schedule (smart for now)
- Edit/rewrite as much as you want — this is a starting point