It’s true that I can scale myself, teams, and organizations to walk and chew gum at the same time, but it is surprisingly effective to focus on one thing at a time. This is the essence of “priority” — put all my energy into one outcome until it’s done. Then the next one, the next one, etc. as my efforts start to compound.
I, like many folk, do much of my best work in coffee mode. When that deep, coffee mode work aligns with my priority, everything is operating smoothly and life is good. If my priority (singular) changes and I need to go deep on something else, that’s not ideal but not so bad either. As long as I can still focus, things are good. When I’m asked to go deep on two things or pulled to work on deep but unaligned tasks, that’s when things get gnarly.
A useful activity that looks like (and is often called) prioritizing is sorting (“triaging”) a list of potential work by what’s most impactful or important. This is more of a planning activity than a priority exercise. It acknowledges there’s a lot to do and time is finite. The result sends a clear signal: this thing at the top of the list is more important than all the things below it. In particular, any of the top items are more useful to work on than all the things further down the list.
Get better at finishing projects. That’s working smarter, not harder. Finished projects, axiomatically, don’t need prioritizing against other work. Limiting work in progress is difficult to pull off in the moment but a crucial tactic to apply when things get intense.
Possibly controversial: multiple priorities is about the same as having no priorities. The trick that priorities pull is freeing us of the energy-sapping process of deciding what’s most important and what trade-offs to make. A single priority is a note from your past, well-considered self saying “this is more important than all the other things; work on it before anything else”.
Systems of “one priority”:
Multiple priorities make it unclear what expectations are for individuals. Choosing what to work on becomes difficult and a burden. A single priority is a mission, a clarity of work. Get this thing done, declare victory, move on.
