To do more you have to do less

Priority is singular

A while back I spoke with a senior leader at a company, Jane.

Jane told me she had such a long list of things that they were responsible for. So many items that were of high importance to the organization. And yet Jane felt that she had very little impact.

I asked her what was important and Jane came up with a list of no fewer than ten items that were all critical and important. I encouraged her to focus on high-impact initiatives and we both went on our way. Months later, Jane lost her job. Cited was her inability to affect change in the organization.

“But I worked so hard, and carried so much for the org!” she told me.

Here is how Jane would’ve succeeded instead.

Priority is singular

Jane had so many priorities that none were really a priority anymore.

A priority is singular. It’s one thing before all others. A simple strategy to figure out your priority is to stack rank all your current priorities, with the first being the most important and the last the least important.

Once you have the list, start crossing off things from the bottom. Until there is just one thing left. That’s it. Now you have a priority.

Your priority is where the majority of your time and energy should go toward. Everything that isn’t that should receive as little as possible or no time or energy.

You can do this for almost any span of time, and it will work. A good strategy is to do this daily, but it works higher level as well, e.g. over the course of a year. For example, this is what mine would be for a random week:

1. hire a new chief bagel officer

2. review the new product release

3. prepare for the board meeting

4. check in with reports

I have one priority: Hire a new chief bagel officer. Given this is my priority, will make sure that this activity gets priority over everything else that week. I’ll arrange my time so that at the end of the week, I can say with confidence that I could not have done more to hire that new role.

Now, this will probably not take up all my time. I might have 10 candidates to interview and might end up taking maybe 10-15 hours in a work week with this activity. It leaves me with ample time to do the same exercise for the next most important thing.

Eventually, I run out of time in the day, and in the week. And so not everything will get done. I’m doing fewer things, but I’m doing the most important thing the most.

Anything that isn’t getting done either becomes more important - and will therefore eventually move up the list. Or doesn’t. Circumstance change and it no longer needs doing.

Do less

“Oh but Job I’m super mega important and if I drop one of these balls the world is going to end”

No it’s not. If you actually focus on a single high priority, maximize the time that you can on it, then the impact of that single thing will outweigh the cost of the dropped balls.

Because, yes, you will drop balls and things will break! By your own logic however, these are not as important as the single priority.

You might ruffle feathers, but you were doing something more important. You were acting on a real, impactful priority.

You will quickly find that there are so many things that feel important, necessary, essential, that really aren’t any of those.

When you’re wrong, and you’re going to be wrong, the feedback loop is super short. Your priority changes. You address the new priority and life moves on.