The Dangers of Not Prioritizing (Priority Series 1/5)

It can be common to feel like you have a never-ending river of responsibilities. You put in what feels like a productive work session, but cannot quite seem to make a dent in your pile.  Learning to prioritize your most important work will allow you to make meaningful progress in your life.

Choosing not to prioritize comes with some dangers.  Here are a few:

1. When we do not prioritize, everything becomes important.  Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, shares a story of how on the day after his daughter was born, he was urged to attend a work meeting by a colleague.  Feeling pressured and not knowing his priorities, he left his wife in the hospital and showed up to work.  When he got there, clients looked at him perplexed and could not understand why he was not with his family.  When you are not clear on your priorities and say yes to everybody to please them, you end up doing more damage in the process – in his case - harm to his family, his integrity, and client relationships.  Agreeing to requests seems like you are being helpful, but you are not; it is much more important to know your priorities and act in accordance with them to serve yourself and others even better.

2. If we do not prioritize, we can get overwhelmed with too many choices.  An abundance of options can be problematic.  In The Paradox of Choice, Professor Barry Schwartz argues that having more choices can lead to unhappiness because it can be harder to cut through the noise and make a decision.  But when you know your priorities, you can look past the superfluous because that diamond is shining so brightly in front of you that you do not even see any of the other enticing stones.

3. When we do not have a clear sense of our priorities, we can engage in multi-tasking by trying to do it all.  Our brain can only focus on one thing at a time, so when we aim to go after two or more high priority items, we pay the price in time and effectiveness.  What happens is not multi-tasking (you cannot solve a math problem and share original poetry at the same time,) instead, what occurs is task switching, spending time on one task, and then moving to another.  A bounce between activities wastes our time because we have to reorient our brains to the new job.  We lose up to 40% of task effectiveness and sometimes more depending on the assignment’s difficulty.  Prioritizing helps us focus on one thing at a time for a longer duration, and that uninterrupted workflow can lead to higher productivity.

4. With no prioritization, we live in reaction mode.  If we do not know what we want to do, we may say yes to things that others want us to do.  Jim Rohn said, “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan.  And guess what they have planned for you?  Not much.”  Getting clarity on your most essential work will allow you to feel good about the job you are doing that supports your mission and vision.  

5. A lack of prioritizing can lead to burnout.  We all know those people who consistently stay late at the office or work on the weekends to catch up.  Sometimes, it’s unavoidable, but when it is the norm, it may be due to a challenge in prioritizing.  This activity is not something to wear as a badge when it comes at the expense of quality family or wellbeing time.  Conversely, there are those people who consistently leave at 6:00 pm to go to the gym because they have prioritized exercise, and knowing they have set boundaries garners great respect.

We may have 100 visions a day, but we cannot accomplish them all simultaneously.  Less is more.  Prioritization is a cornerstone of productivity and once you build this habit, it will help with time management and work-life balance.   

Quote of the day: “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Q: What is one skill that you can be excellent in that would have the most significant positive impact on your career?  How willing are you to prioritize that skill development?  Comment and share with us, we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 2/5 will focus on the importance of long-term planning to facilitate prioritization]

As a Leadership and Executive Coach, I partner with others to help discover and clarify priorities, contact me to learn more.

What’s your cost to not prioritizing?

Top 5 Reasons To Say Yes

In the last article, we discussed reasons to say no, even when it is most difficult, and offered a few examples on how best to phrase it.  But, when is it ok to say yes or even hell yeah!?

 Here Are The Top 5 Reasons To Say Yes:

1. If it is an opportunity that directly aligns with your goals, it can be an easy yes.  The sooner you can connect to your mission, the happier you will be in all aspects of your life.

2. When it is a project that stirs up ecstasy within you. Entrepreneur and Author Derek Sivers’ motto when considering a request is to avoid saying yes to projects he is sort of interested in; it’s either hell yeah or no, nothing in between and that makes the decision-making process so much easier for him.  Doing something out of obligation is an immediate no.  Instead, he has to be completely entranced by the project to commit.

3. When you are aiming to build your skills and you know it is a project that will stretch you, say yes.  What I have found is that the more experiences we have, the more diverse the perspectives we accumulate, and it is precisely this type of cross-pollination of ideas that fuel innovation and leads to significant personal growth.

 4. Say yes to things that scare you because the best way to eradicate the fear is to do the very thing that frightens you.  Sure, the thought of giving a big speech in front of your company may cause the nerves to rattle.  But, just saying yes, even when you are unsure about the likelihood of pulling it off, generates a surge of confidence that becomes critical to conquering that very fear.  I find that most things seem hard initially, but when you jump into it and apply hard work, discipline, resourcefulness, and a learning mindset, even mountains become molehills.

5. It has a unique and altruistic impact on others.  If you have the power to make a small gesture, which will not consume all of your time, in order to have a massive effect on others, go for it!  Service to others is the highest calling and will create an avalanche of positive benefits for all involved.  

 Quote of the day: "Opportunities multiply as they are seized." -Sun Tzu. 

Q: What is something you said yes to that was initially terrifying, but later it turned out to be an incredible decision?  Comment and share with us, we would love to hear!

Saying yes when you really want to feels great

Never Arrive Late Again With This Easy Hack

Even with generating anxious and unpleasant feelings for all parties involved, lateness is an occurrence that has plagued the best of us time and time again. So why does it happen and what can we do about it? In 1979, renowned economist Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky proposed the Planning Fallacy.  It states that people are lousy at figuring out how much time they will take to complete something because they overestimate their abilities and underestimate the degree to which they are estimating, since they think they can do more than they actually can.

Say for instance, you were supposed to meet a friend at 2pm downtown.  Since it only takes 40 minutes to get there, you calculate a 1:20pm departure to arrive in the nick of time, right? Well, let’s examine that logic a bit closer.  Here are some of the assumptions you may have made in your decision: a) you will get dressed in time and out the door by said time, b) the trains are running smoothly and you make your transfer, c) there will be no amazing subway entertainers who distract you resulting in missing your stop and d) you will be able to walk the 3 blocks with no foot traffic from the congested streets, and avoid the myriad of other random popups. 

Here are some strategies to overcome the planning fallacy:

1. Add 50% Additional Time. The trick is to remain cognizant of the potential to be late while planning for the worst-case scenario; then, the probability of being late immediately begins to dwindle. So, go ahead and assume that you may not be able to find that coveted shirt that you had been wanting to wear or that the trains are going to be slow. Just by adding 50% extra time to your original estimate; in this case - aiming to leave at 1:00pm instead of 1:20pm will significantly improve your punctuality.

The same challenges arise with intellectual tasks as people are not good at estimating how long it will take to get something done because of an optimism bias. You may think, of course, I can complete the book by the end of the year; after all, I am smart and capable and will get it done.  Unfortunately, people are often really poor judges of their abilities.  A good way to address this is to gather more information, which in turn allows for better planning.  Getting an outside perspective to see how long it will actually take can be helpful.  That may include talking to a published author so you can learn about all of the smaller steps in the book writing process that you may not know of or you may have overlooked. 

When Danielle Kahneman was planning on collaborating with other professors to write a textbook on morals for his university, he thought it would have been completed in about two years; but the Dean, who had seen so many professors in his position before, said it would be more like 3-5 years.  In his experience, about 40% of professors who started a massive collaborative project similar to this one did not finish.  Indeed, the Dean was right as it ended up taking them much longer to complete because they based their timeline on the best-case scenario and did not factor in the general vicissitudes of life including divorce, death, and bureaucratic obstacles that slowed the work of the team.

2. Add a buffer for the unknown. We absolutely cannot plan for every scenario, but a good way to reduce stress is to create an additional allowance for unexpected events that can potentially put a wrinkle in our schedules. 

3. Use the 10/90 Rule. Another way to be a more effective planner would be to invoke what Brian Tracy dubbed the 10/90 Rule for personal effectiveness.  He notes that when you spend 10% of your time planning and organizing your work before you begin, you will save 90% of the time in getting the job done once you get started.  Lots of good things happen when you think on paper. 

These three strategies - a) adding 50% additional time, b) creating space for the unknown, c) and utilizing the 10/90 rule can help in combating the planning fallacy.

Q: What are your favorite hacks to achieve punctuality in your work?

Quote of the day: "Amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics."  -General Omar Bradley

Anticipate and Avoid the Planning Fallacy