Determining our focus is all very well. It looks good on paper to have something written out that tells us what actually matters in life. It feels like something to be proud of that we have established our ‘north star’ firmly in the sky to guide us. BUT – how does that help us during the day when the bright lights of emails and meetings and chat messages and crying children and even our own brain fog means that star is all but invisible? How do we prioritise in practice?
A two sentence guide
In truth, there are only two sentences you need to prioritise day to day and in the moment.
- What available activity will have the biggest impact in my current context?
- What available activity, if left undone, will have the biggest cost in my current context?
It is your answer to those two questions that determines what you should prioritise.
Simple isn’t it?
But, it will be helpful to actually pick some of those phrases apart and dive a little deeper into what that actually means both in principle and in practice.
Available activities
The most important thing to say in all of this is that the use of the word ‘activity’ is deliberate. An activity I understand as something you do. Since it is not possible to be doing literally nothing….everything we do qualifies as an ‘activity’. Based on this, sleep is an activity. Going for a run is an activity. A task on your to do list is an activity. Calling your mum on the phone. All of these things are activities. I deliberately use this word so we are clear that we are not just talking about things on your to-do list. We are not just talking about work. That’s going to be important later on.
The next critical point is that it must be available. That means it is something that you can actually do right now. No matter how urgent or important something is, if you cannot actually do it right now, it does not matter.
So, we need to think about where we are, what we have with us, who we are with and what we are committed to.
Where are you?
It’s tempting to think that modern technology is eliminating this as a consideration. It is, that is true, but as considerations go, this one is so important that technology has not really made a huge dent as yet. When I am in town, or at a supermarket, a whole host of activities become available that are not available anywhere else. The same is true at home. The same is true in my office or at my desk at home.
Where you are, determines what activities you can actually do. We often cannot prioritise something if we need to be somewhere else to do it.
What do you have?
Some activities require certain equipment in order to be possible. Again, technology is changing this. I no longer need to be at my work computer to access my work email. To be honest, all my working life, pretty much, I have been able to access my work ‘stuff’ from elsewhere via webmail etc, but in the early days it was such a faff to do so and a bad experience when I did, that I often did not bother.
In short – if you do not have what you need, you cannot prioritise something.
Who are you with?
Again – if you are not with a particular person then any activity that involves that person is off limits. I have a slight caveat here that I think it is worth considering. You can of course call someone, message them or email them. One thing technology does is enable us to communicate to anyone in the world at any time of day. But, pause and think. What is the best way? Somethings are better said in person. Or…..next time your son has a birthday, try turning up via Zoom and see if he thinks that is just as good…. My mantra with communication technology (not mine, I stole it) – with great power, comes great responsibility.
What are you committed to?
In some ways, this is becoming less of thing but it still really matters. Generally speaking, I have working hours. Hours I have committed to work. This makes a whole host of work activities available and a whole host of non-work activities unavailable. The reverse is true when I am with my family. Modern life seems to be blurring these boundaries and I am not yet fully convinced this is a good thing. It can have huge advantages. But, more often than not, it is more of a one way street than two way (i.e. our boss expects us to allow work to bleed into the rest of life but is not happy for the reverse to happen) and more generally it just leads to having a split focus which is not good for anything.
This question also applies to deadlines. If I have committed to do something today, generally speaking, that limits what is available to me.
The biggest impact and/or the biggest cost
There are three parts to this. Most often, we only consider the first one.
The value/benefit (or detriment)
Some activities ‘move the needle’. Some activities make a difference. This could be something that jumps a project forward or secures a big win for your key objectives. Others don’t. They are meaningless busy work. Things we do that have little value or impact.
What you need to have an impact on are things that you have determined to be your focus, your objectives and your big values. There is no point in engaging activity that has a significant impact on stuff you just don’t consider to be important.
The flip side of this is the cost and detriment from not doing something. Some activities don’t have a huge benefit but the cost of not doing it is high. Some activites are both – high benefit from doing it, high cost from not.
Direct/Indirect
I still find it so surprising that this is not given more credence in a lot of circles. Some activities will have a direct benefit on thing you are trying to acheive. This we know. This is what we focus on. So, completing a task, working on a project, participating in a meeting. These are all the things that come to mind when we think of what will have an impact. The impact they have is direct.
But, indirect impacts are too often overlooked. A former colleague of mine was Head of HR at a big charity I worked for. In the role, there was a huge amount of stuff they needed to do that would be direct activity. Huge direct value in doing it and/or huge direct cost if not done. I was always encouraged by the time they carved out, consistently, for self development, for attending training courses and for generally growing their awareness of the kinds of issues that might be in the pipeline for the organisation. None of this had a direct impact, but the indirect impact was huge. Prioritising this meant that down the line, the direct impact activities were far more effective.
But it is not just this kind of self development etc. Taking a break/making a drink will not directly impact any of the things you need to do, but the indirect benefit can be huge. Getting enough sleep is another big one.
We can be creative here. For a time, the most successful car salesman in America was a man who did not focus on ‘how can I sell this person, this car?’ but ‘how can I make sure when this person needs their next car, they come to me?’ That change in focus probably harmed their direct value on immediate sales, but had a huge indirect impact on their overall sales performance.
Which leads to the next idea….
Cumulative/Immediate
Again, we all know about immediate impact or immediate cost. If I do this, then this benefit will happen now. If I don’t make this phone call, then we lose the client today. But cumulative impacts over time, can often be a lot more valuable.
My go to example here is exercise. If I go for a run today (for the first time in a while) the impact of this will be sore muscles and physical tiredness. My day will be harder because I exercised. My day will be less profitible and every other activity less beneficial. So – don’t exercise! But, if I exercise consistently, over a period of time, the impact of that will be indirect and cumulative. I will have more energy, more clarity, more focus.
If I don’t clean the office kitchen today – not really a huge problem. But, over time and imperceptibly, the cost of not doing it grows until the office kitchen becomes a place that only the bravest will go. We start buying coffee in the cafe down the street. More time lost to make the trip, more money spent. You get the idea.
Many activities have cumulative effects if done consistently. The immediate impact is small. But, ignore the cumulative at your peril.
Your current context
For me, this is also a big consisdaration.
I think about time available and my current energy/focus/motivation levels. I think about the context of the rest of my day and the rest of my week. I also think about the effort required to acheive something here.
Time
If I have 10 minutes, then activities taking longer than this are unavailable. I might get them done, but they will be rushed and the impact they have will be harmed. Generally speaking I consider it to be an inefficient approach to tackle activities in multiple short snippets of time. I am thinking this through at the moment as I am not good at using these short snippets of time. My example is reading. Some stuff, I can read in 5-10 minutes. It’s short enough. But, if I am reading a book with longer chapters, I find that if I tackle in them in short snippets spread out over time, I cover the ground but nothing is absorbed. It is ultimately time wasted.
Energy
Maybe I am exhausted after a long and draining meeting or a bad night’s sleep. Certain things might be better left until my energy and cognitive function is improved. Perhaps the rest of my day or week requires certain reserves of energy, time, cognitive or physical function. Well, I need to ensure that my current choices about what I do, don’t compromise that. If I need to prepare something for a particular time – that needs to be factored in.
Effort
Lastly we consider the effort required. I thought about including this as a separate heading. BUT, I do not want to give you the impression that the biggest impact with the least effort is always the right way to go. It’s not.
Strictly speaking any activity becomes available with sufficient effort. When you consider effort vs value, however, there might be better options. For example, right now I need to get some new slippers. That is an activity. But I am home and it is 10:06pm. If I were to get in the car and drive for 20 minutes, I would get to the 24 hour Asda and I could get some slippers. All in, that would probably take 1 hour. I could do it. But, my context is I need to be up at 4:45am to travel to Newcastle. Yes I could do it, but it’s not a good idea.
And so…..strategy
This is where strategic planning comes into play to take advantage of things like task batching and striving to minimise context switching.
Often, leaving certain activities until a time when we can group them with other activities that require similar conditions or a similar kind of effort, can significantly minimise the amount of effort required and therefore it is just a more efficient way to do things.
The Crisis
Sometime you face a crisis. It is important to caveat all the above here. In a crisis all bets are off and all other considerations become irrelevant. Everything written above needs to be laid aside and you do what needs to be done to deal with the crisis. That instantly becomes the highest value activity to a degree that renders everything else obsolete.
There are many kinds of crisis, large and small. Some I have faced in life would include (n.b. I am intentionally leaving out some significant ones for personal reasons).
- The building I was responsible for managing following a major refurbishment leaked massively the first day it rained.
- A colleague got stuck in a lift
- A family member was unwell
- A colleague had a crisis and I was best placed to support them
- Having to work out how to provide online church services in less than a week.
- etc
Just do something
The above are considerations can be used as a guide. Not to paralyse you into indecision. Ultimately, the highest value activity is the one you actually do. Sometimes, you just have to go on instinct, make a decision and crack on. That is often far more valuable than spending time agonising over what is most important to prioritise.
So – how do you prioritise in practice? Take a moment to consider your options and their impact. Then just do something.
Consider the batching principle above. The most effective people ‘batch’ their planning & prioritising decision making into daily and weekly slots. It is here they step back and consider the whole. Then in the moment, just execute the plan. It saves the time and cognitive effort of having to do this activity 100 times a day. 100 times when you are much more likely to be swayed by whatever is shouting at you the loudest.
