Prioritization Question Response

Recently I was asked about prioritization and a 70 hour work week:

“How are you deciding where those 70 hours should be allocated, and do you have a system you use to make those decisions?”

I thought the answer to him would be relevant and valuable for the people on my email list as well.

Enjoy:

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey Andre, thanks for the comment.

I have a very clear set of both high level and granular priorities right now and yes I have an effective system for determining them.

Happy to talk to you about it but really, the most important piece of it is iteration.

Something people consistently get wrong with prioritizing effectively and therefore understanding where to allocate your time is that they try to solve an action problem by thinking.

We try to logically determine our priorities by thinking.

I have fallen into this trap many times as a scientist and engineer who likes to think.

The issue with thinking to solve problems is that it generates no data.

Yes, thinking and deep work are very important skills, but most people in most predicaments in my opinion use it to solve the wrong problems, like prioritization.

People generally push this back with the thought “but if I don’t think, I won’t spend time on the real priority and I’ll waste it.”

They then proceed to waste an entire month trying to determine the real priority and all of the sudden they’re behind and frustrated.

Instead, we identify our overarching general goals, general not specific, and a small task associated with each.

We then use our intuition to complete this task.

This already moves us forward, we have completed something.

It also provides us with data that we can ask ourselves and others, was this

1. the right goal to work on,

1. if so, was it the right task or the wrong one, or

1. was this the wrong goal to work on.

You will quickly learn through action and emotion, your intuition, if what you are doing is your highest priority.

After enough iteration and quick objective analysis of the actions you took, it’s almost impossible to not have a very clear image and understanding of what your clear priorities are.

A brief example, you’re building a business and your overarching goal is to scale to a larger amount of revenue.

Underneath this your goals are

1. create a better service,

1. get more customers, and

1. make sure your operations are organized.

Tasks then become

1. identify the next feature you’re going to add,

1. reach out to 10 new potential customers,

1. make a new spreadsheet to organize your expenses.

It’s pretty evident that yes 1 and 3 would be nice, but after completing those things, you wouldn’t be closer to more revenue because you had not worked on getting more customers.

Ah, so there is the highest priority.

Now within getting more customers you simply repeat this process.

Should I 1) post content, 2) send DMs, 3) etc.

Well, take action, see what happens, look at that data and show it to people who know what they’re talking about.

All of the sudden after a week or two of just hammering this way you will be very clear on what you need to work on and you will have made progress toward your goals.

Instead of just mentally masturbating over what your goals are and doing nothing but thinking.

Create space.

Fill that space with action.

Collect data.

Use data to assess direction.

Iterate.

Hope that helps.

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

If this was valuable to you and seeing my responses to individuals specific problems is something you’d like more of, just respond to this email and let me know.