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Sunday, October 9, 2022

How To Prioritize When Everything Feels Important

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Prioritization is the art of sacrifice. How to prioritize is not easy, especially when you must choose between two good alternatives.

Leadership is the art of making decisions. Saying “yes” is easy and comfortable, but what we say “no” to defines our success. Great leaders know when to make sacrifices in order to stay focused.

Imagine taking over a tech company that’s hemorrhaging money because sales are down. Will you choose to launch more products or cut the innovation pipeline by 70%?

That’s the dilemma Steve Jobs was faced with when he returned to Apple in 1997. The company’s sales plummeted by 30% during the final quarter of 1996––Apple was on the brink of failure.

Steve Jobs would eventually turn the company he founded around, but only after he had made some tough choices first. Jobs reduced the number of Apple products by 70%. Among the casualties was the Newton — a favorite of former CEO John Sculley.

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” Jobs famously said. “It’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.”

Jobs understood that prioritization is all about making tough calls, especially when it requires favoring one good thing over another good thing.

The Dangers of Not Prioritizing

"I'm too busy" has become a socially acceptable excuse for any request – from declining meeting invitations to refusing to take on more work. Being busy is a badge of honor that makes us look and feel important. However, chronic busyness maybe a sign that we're bad at prioritizing.

Prioritization is not just essential for productivity. It also ensures that the right things get done at the right time. The prioritization process lets you and your team make informed decisions about what to focus on and when.

When we prioritize our work, we don't just focus on what matters the most – we also regain control of our lives.

The benefits of effective prioritization are easy to observe. However, failing to do so can be detrimental. Not establishing clears priorities can be dangerous for you and your team.

Here's why:

Everything feels important

If you and your team don't prioritize effectively, someone else – a manager or customer – will do it for you. When you don't have clear priorities, you end up saying "yes" to everybody. Pleasing others does more damage than good. That something is a priority for a third party doesn't mean it should also become a priority for your team.

When you let others define your priorities, everything feels important.
Your team is stretching too thin

Teams face a constant burden. They have too many problems to solve and not enough time or resources to deal with everything on their plate. It's important to know what amount of work you can take on or everyone in your team will end up stressed out.

You sacrifice long-term benefits for short-term wins

The temptation of a quick win doesn't come free. You have to redirect time from a long-term initiative to pursue a short-term benefit. Prioritization is an investment, so consider which projects will generate a superior long-term return.

Stop pursuing problems that don't have the most significant value for your team.  

The wrong task will suck your energy

A toxic customer, a project going nowhere, or irrelevant tasks steal more than you and your team's time – they suck your energy. Research shows that a gap in priorities between an ideal and real life increases the risk of burnout. Eliminate problematic projects to protect your team's energy and drive.

Saying "no" to toxic tasks will pay huge dividends to you and your team.

You'll never solve the right problem

Prioritization means choosing not only what problems to solve but also which not to solve. If your team says "yes" to every problem, they're saying "no" to the right ones. You can't focus on what really matters when you're too busy.

Remove distractions so your team can focus on the right problem – encourage colleagues to say "no" more often.

“If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one.” – Jack Ma, Co-Founder, Alibaba Group

Most organizations aren't great at prioritizing – they try to catch all rabbits. Most leaders aren't good at prioritizing, either. They make choices in the dark, failing to understand how conflicting priorities affect their teams' capacities. That's why most organizations suffer from "everything is important" syndrome – they fail to separate what's essential from what's not.

Building a culture of effective prioritizing doesn't happen overnight. It takes time and effort. Most importantly, it requires structural changes and a huge mindset shift.

5 Ways to Become Better at Prioritizing

# 1 Work smarter, not harder

The always-on culture is harming you and your team. There are many reasons why it has to go. Hard work often disguises team inefficiencies. People have to work more and more hours to compensate for ineffective prioritization.

Often team members overwork themselves for the wrong reasons. Either they want to achieve too many things or are trying to meet others' expectations. Take virtual presenteeism as an example: the average worker spends an additional 67 minutes online daily to be perceived as a hard worker.

Shifting our relationship with the idea of incompleteness is liberating. Realizing that we're never done working releases a lot of pressure and unnecessary anxiety.  

Working smarter, not harder, is about prioritizing quality over quantity – or outcome over effort. With my consulting clients, I see a lot of people that just care about velocity but never pause to reflect on their priorities. Moving fast in the wrong direction will get you nowhere.

Why not work smarter instead of harder?

Working smarter is about being more intentional about how you work. It seems obvious, yet it requires reframing our relationship with productivity – to shift our focus from input to outcome. From focusing on high-impact tasks and cutting down your to-do list to concentrating on deep work and tackling tasks in chunks (rather than one by one).

Start by rejecting the notion that everything is urgent, critical, and important.

# 2 Separate essential work from non-essential

When everything is a priority, it's harder to separate what matters from what doesn't.

Marcus Aurelius said, "If you seek tranquility, do less." The Roman emperor and philosopher didn't promote laziness. On the contrary, he advocated for focusing on what's essential. Aurelius called it the double satisfaction: "to do less, better."

In his book Essentialism, Greg McKeown advocated a similar approach: get only the right things done. Rather than the typical productivity approach (get more done in less time), McKeown challenges the assumption that "we can have it all" or that "we have to do everything." He invites us to focus on "the right thing, in the right way, in the right time."

Effective prioritizing is the realization that not all hours and not all work is created equal. Effective prioritizing is the realization that not all hours and not all work is created equal. It liberates your and your team from a busyness mindset (reactive) so they can regain control (proactive) of how they work.

Essentialism is the relentless pursuit of less but better. It's not about getting more things done, but getting the right things done. It is about making the wisest possible investment of everyone's time and energy so teams can operate at their highest point of contribution.

Effective prioritization is a zero-sum game. If a new task becomes a priority for your team, something else must become less important. You can't prioritize without deprioritizing.

One company helps their employee deprioritize by asking second-order questions – to inquire about the importance of the task, not just what's needed:

• How important is this?

• When is it due?

• What would you like me to deprioritize?

# 3 Prioritize how you prioritize using 'even over' statements

Effective prioritization requires establishing what's the criteria before conflicts arise. Often companies wait until it's too late. They discuss what's most important once they're dealing with conflicting priorities.

Crafting 'even over' statements will help you define those criteria ahead of the game. It will make it easier for your team to determine what to say "yes" to.

For example, Amazon prioritizes:

  •     Long-term value creation even over short-term results
  •     Speed even over perfection
  •     High performance even over harmony

Even over statements help you define the trade-off your team is willing to make when choosing between two good things. You can't be both "customer-centric" and "people-first." Both are important and good things. However, when push comes to shove, which will really come first?

Even over statements anticipate potential conflicts, clarifying which way to go. They force the team to choose one good thing even over a not When Netflix prioritizes "performance even over effort," it doesn't mean that the streaming giant doesn't care about the employees giving all they've got. It means that Netflix cares more about the end result than the effort itself.

When it comes to choosing between two good things, what's your real priority?

# 4 Evaluate priorities considering both the impact and effort required

Use the powerful Eisenhower Matrix to determine the effort and impact of each task or project. Get rid of Not urgent/Not important activities. Urgent/Important things need immediate action. However, the Important/Not urgent are usually the ones that will help you achieve your long-term goals – this quadrant is the "sweet spot, according to author Steven Covey. To put the matrix into practice start time blocking your important/not urgent activities.

Time blocking is a time management method that asks you to divide your day into blocks of time. Each block is dedicated to accomplishing a specific activity and only those specific activities. Instead of keeping an open-ended to-do list of things you’ll get to as you’re able, you’ll start each day with a concrete schedule that lays out what you’ll work on and when.

The key to this method is prioritizing your task list in advance — a dedicated weekly review is a must. Take stock of what’s coming up for the week ahead and make a rough sketch of your time blocks for each day. At the end of every workday, review any tasks you didn’t finish — as well as any new tasks that have come in — and adjust your time blocks for the rest of the week accordingly.

 "A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure."   — Cal Newport, Author of Deep Work

# 5 Make it a daily practice of asking yourself and your team the 'strategic question.'

The strategic question: If You’re Saying Yes to this, What Must You Say No To? is more complex that it sounds, which accounts for its potential. To begin with, you’re asking people to be clear and committed to their Yes. Too often, we kinda sorta half-heartedly agree to something, or more likely, there’s a complete misunderstanding in the room as to what’s been agreed to. So, to ask, “Let’s be clear: What exactly are you saying Yes to?” brings the commitment out of the shadows. If you ask, “What could being fully committed to this idea look like?” it bring things into sharper, bolder focus.

But a Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries and form.  If you say yes to this meeting, you’re saying No to something else that’s happening at the same time at the meeting. Understanding this kind of No helps you understand the implication of the decision. 

So, when someone asks you to do something, try to pause and yourself: If I say “yes” to this, what will I be saying ‘no’ to doing? Once you answer that question, you're in a better position to evaluate whether you should say “yes” or “no” or “yes, but with these conditions. 

Your team and company culture is defined, but what you say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to. Prioritization requires making sacrifices, especially when you have to choose between two good things.

Prioritizing work is worth the effort. You can increase productivity and impact while you lower unnecessary stress. Make time for effective prioritization.

Check out a related post: The Problem With An Always Urgent Work Culture

To your greater success and happiness,




Peter Mclees,
 Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

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