How to Prioritise
Last week, I delivered a workshop called The Secrets to Peak Productivity as part of Learn & Connect Fest at Harrods. The workshop was sold out with curious, passionate Harrods employees who wanted to learn how to be more effective in their work.
Part of the beauty of taking ideas to a group like that is to feel the resonances and the dischord, to fine-tune those ideas for the future. To listen for the questions you get asked or the ideas that don’t land.
One question I got asked - which, somewhat strangely in retrospect, I hadn’t fully addressed - was how do I prioritise?
So let’s explore together how a passionate, curious leader who wants to have more impact in the world might prioritise more effectively. Not the tools to do the look at all the things we could prioritise from - that, we might call Choice Management.
But how do we make the choices if we want to do what I outlined in the workshop: be more productive in the 21st Century sense. Not just ‘more output per input’, but getting more of what matters done (the output that really matters) in this one, precious life we have (input).
Understand What Matters Most to You
There is no way I have found to dive straight to what matters most for us than to consider our mortality. To consider the eulogy that we would like to be given should we reach the end of a life well-lived. To reflect on what might make us sad, if it had or hadn’t happened by the time we died.
These are bold questions to ask ourselves and require courage. And they are surprisingly hope-filled and heart-opening to answer.
And better to know the answers (and your shortfalls) now than to only realise them when it’s too late.
Once you know the answers to these questions, then make choices in line with them.
Focus on Who You Are On Your Best Days
Some people might reflect on their values: the qualities that they aspire to, that they believe a person should embody (even if they know they don’t always manage it). I like the phrase Higher Self - the felt sense I have at times that I am my most wise, skilful, noble and honourable.
One way to prioritise is to know those values or that sense and ask: if I was really living up to my values, if I was truly acting as my Higher Self today, what would I prioritise then?
Create a Vision
There’s no more powerful visioning exercise that I’ve ever done than Debbie Millman’s Plan for a Remarkable Life. It taps into the subconscious (or is it the beyond-conscious?), showing us what we really want without us even realising. It releases pressure more than adds it, helping us notice the simplicity of life. It trains the Reticular Activating System to show us the types of houses or clothes or people that we really want in our lives. And of course, sometimes it shows us the terrible-seeming gaps that we want to fill.
And once we know it, Millman says we just read it once a year and see what happens. And, she says, be careful what you wish for. Because it might just come true.
Trust Your Intuition
To paraphrase Daniel Kahnemann, intuition is the hero of the story. Derek Sivers offers us a frame for decision making: it’s either Hell Yeah or No. And our intuition (or anyone listening to us talk about something) can usually tell us which something is. To be clear: if you aren’t Hell Yeah for something, you say No.
If you’re willing to trust your intution, there’s almost no better way to make decisions and set priorities.
Cultivate the intuition compass, ask if it’s a Hell Yeah or not, or check in: What does Wisdom say I should do now?
Focus on Enabling
One of the lessons I learned from the work of Jennifer Garvey Berger is that in a complex world (and most of us operate fully in the complexity of the 21st Century), we can’t control what happens. Instead, we need to focus on enabling. We focus on creating the conditions for good things to happen.
My favourite enabling question is from The One Thing by Gary Keller. What’s the ONE THING I can do, such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?
If you have what Keller calls a ‘Someday goal’ (that could come from considering your death or completing the Plan For a Remarkable Life) you can use his question in a nested way:
What’s the ONE THING I can do this year, such that by doing it everything else about my someday goal becomes easier or unnecessary?
Then, what’s the ONE THING I can do in the next three months, such that by doing it everything else about my This Year Goal becomes easier or unnecessary?
Then, what’s the ONE THING I can do this month, such that by doing it everything else about my Three Month Goal becomes easier or unnecessary?
Then, what’s the ONE THING I can do this week, such that by doing it everything else about my This Month Goal becomes easier or unnecessary?
Then, what’s the ONE THING I can do today, such that by doing it everything else about my This Week Goal becomes easier or unnecessary?
And then you know what to do next.
Prioritisation isn’t easy. But it matters.
At least: it matters if you want to get more of what really matters done with this one, precious life you have.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
Buy the 12-Minute Method series of books, written 12 minutes a week over three years, here.