Priorities: It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose
A very important topic in our realities. The era of productivity and efficiency has passed. There will always be more goals, information and things to do than we can process and do. Then it will only get bigger and faster. It is impossible to master everything.
“It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose”
D. McCormack
Today is the time of ruthless prioritization, for which just few people are ready. The time when you need to choose from equally good or incomprehensible options. It is no longer possible to treat prioritization as a tool if it is not small amounts of information. Often the scheme “… set priorities and now you will have time to do everything” does not work. No, you won’t have time. You need to choose first, and then do it. Prioritization is a way of thinking, not a tool. Such thinking needs to be learned, and we have to accept that there is no other choice. It especially bombs me when I hear the phrases “you have all the time, it’s just a matter of priorities” or “urgent and unimportant things need to be delegated.”
For the authors of the first phrase, I have a case up my sleeve. It’s cruel, but it puts them in a stupor. I ask them to imagine that they live in the city center. They have a son and a daughter, whom they naturally love equally. One day they say on TV that a meteorite is flying to Earth, and in 10 minutes there will be no more Earth. You need to say goodbye to the children, spend equally 10 minutes with each of them. Now prioritize so that you can see both. Of course, this is a trick, since no one can physically be in two places at the same time. But it illustrates well that the priority is that he is the priority that he is alone. No one can clone themselves to do more tasks. You need to choose. We don’t have time for everything, we have time for priority.
“The word “priority” appeared in English in the 1400s. It was a singular number. It meant the very first or the previous one. This remained the only one for the next 500 years. It was only in the 1900s that we expanded the term and started talking about priorities”
From the book Essentialism
For those who advise delegating urgent and unimportant matters. I have a request to come down from heaven to earth. Let’s say I’m a manager in a large company, I have a supervisor, and he has his own supervisor. The task comes from the management, and it needs to be solved. There are no additional options in the form of a personal assistant or a budget for hiring him. To whom are all these people advised to delegate? Maybe there is some magical way to get yourself a free personal assistant, but I do not know about it? This can be attributed to top management, but most of them do everything themselves and do not have the resources to delegate. Therefore, it is definitely not worth advising this to everyone, or tell them to whom to delegate exactly then.
Before I realized the importance of selectivity, I read that Warren Buffett advises making a list of 25 goals that you want to achieve over the next few years or over the course of your life. Then choose the five most important ones from them, and then avoid the rest of the goals until you complete the first five. Avoid! And do not queue up and try to fulfill them! Then it seemed to me that this was a beautiful statement of a billionaire, but today I understand that he is 100% right.
“Choosing a goal sometimes means that you have to give up what you want in order to get what you want even more”
Ray Dalio
It is not very easy to do this. It is necessary to combine together the analysis of the current situation, the strongest causal relationship with the goal, the Pareto principle and much more to choose the most important and only priority. You need to learn how to build chains of events and plan the effect of each goal and task. To choose a priority that will knock down all the other dominoes and have the most positive impact on your life with minimal effort. This is a separate art and the main challenge of our time.
Life priorities are more or less clear. Everyone has heard the story about crystal balls. Imagine you are juggling five balls: “work”, “family”, “health”, “friends” and “soul”. The job is a rubber ball, and all the others are crystal. If the rubber ball falls, it will bounce off the floor. The rest of the balls will get damaged or even break. This story is attributed to Brian Dyson, former CEO of Coca-Cola. He wanted to convey to us that we and our family are the most important things. Just like in the Vin Diesel memes. And at work, you should not sweat yourself till you lose your mind and ruin your life. The idea is relevant for life priorities. You, your health, energy and family/friends are the most important. Without these resources, ambitious goals are not worth talking about. Therefore, they are the highest priority by default. Most of our goals work for the benefit of life priorities. They have many tools for prioritizing goals and tasks. In the process of adopting selectivity, I tried a lot of them, but left one method, one technique and two techniques for additional verification.
ABC-analysis.
Initially, the ABC analysis method was used to improve the efficiency of the sales system. Its purpose is to highlight the most promising products or services that bring the maximum amount of profit for the company. To determine the most valuable goods, three categories are used: A — the most valuable, B — intermediate, C — the least valuable. According to the same principle, it is used in prioritization. Identify goals and objectives that will bring the best effect. When I studied motivation, I terrorized myself with the question, “what is really important to me?” in order to sort out my desires. To do this, I wrote out all the activities and resources that I had and that I wanted more of. After getting acquainted with ABC analysis, I marked all the items in my lists offhand as: A — the most important, B — important, C — desirable. Every six months I look into my notes for updating. If everything were so simple, there wouldn’t be so many quotes about priorities in the world. The difficulty is that it is not clear which letter is worthy of the goal or task. What is the difference between the most important and important, how to understand what is really important, and a bunch of other questions. First, I reason with myself and label according to my feelings. That’s what I do with everything I can. With desires, goals, tasks, resources and even with the characteristics of household appliances when choosing. I am always ready to take the risk that time will decrease dramatically and I will have to choose what to give up. Then, to verify that the priority is determined correctly, I use the Descartes square.
Descartes Square.
Descartes square is a well — known decision-making technique. So famous that it is found in almost every article about time management. Because of this, at first, I was even skeptical of it. Today I think that the Descartes square is the coolest and most important technique for priorities. It works flawlessly to check whether I have placed the task in the correct category of ABC analysis, and for prioritization in general. To use it, you need to answer 4 questions for any action, goal, task, solution or situation:
1. What will happen if this thing happens? (What will I get, what are the advantages of it);
2. What will happen if it doesn’t happen? (If everything remains as it was, then what are the advantages of not getting what you want);
3. What won’t happen if this happens? (What are the disadvantages of getting what you want);
4. What won’t happen if it doesn’t happen? (What are the disadvantages of not getting what you want).
If you have never met this square, then the questions may seem strange, but a couple of articles and examples will quickly clarify it. The Descartes square allows you to soberly assess the consequences of any action. I believe that the assessment of consequences is the main thing in priorities. If we made a list of tools that many people know about, but few people use, then the Descartes square would be in the top. Always analyze the benefits and losses from any task in order to prioritize correctly. Don’t try to answer these questions in your mind. Fill in the Descartes square visually to analyze the problem from different points of view and compare with others.
Multiply by 100 or x100.
I overheard the “x100” technique in some video on YouTube. According to it, it is proposed to multiply the consequences of each task by 100. Then, comparing the results obtained, prioritize. The main thing is to always check it with desires and the current situation, otherwise the construction of any task 100 times automatically makes it the coolest. I use this technique as an additional tool. For example, my goal is to become a project manager. I need to study project management methodologies and English. Multiply by 100. In the first case, you are a cool manager who can lead any project. In the second, you are a native speaker of English. What will be more useful to you for the goal? Everything, but relative to your goal, English definitely has less priority.
This approach was described by Elon Musk in the Lex Friedman podcast. He shared the tool he uses to solve complex problems and called it thinking at the limit. You take a meaningful metric and increase it to the largest and then the smallest value. Then you simulate the changes that have occurred in your processes. This way you can see important gaps or insights. The same aggravation approach can be applied to goals, tasks, decisions and personal processes.
The Apocalypse, please.
I bet you didn’t expect this, but I came up with this technique myself. For sure, it already exists with a different name and author, but I named it that way in honor of a song by Muse. The purpose of the technique is to artificially create a critical situation and limit time. Imagine that a meteorite is flying to Earth, and there are 10 minutes left to live. What would you do? What will your attention be focused on? This is the main thing in life. It is not necessary to experience such a negative for prioritization every time. Make it a rule, even when you have the time and resources, pretend to be Warren Buffett. Cross off all but the three most important tasks from your list. Make the first three tasks a top priority. Whether you want it or not, sure or not, just try to do it.
At the start of my career at red_mad_robot, I wrote large lists of goals and objectives. Each time I was asked to single out the 3 main ones and condemned me to the torments of choice. After all, to understand where the priority is, you need to decide which goals are not a priority. It hurts, so it really annoyed me. Today I do it myself and demand it from others. This technique helps in the course of the situation to be ready to automatically make a decision, and not to sit down and puzzle over what to do, falling into a panic.
Prioritizing is incredibly difficult. As long as they are not placed, a huge number of options feeds uncertainty and causes stress. In this state, a person is definitely not up to facilitating a war for resources between their own tasks. Decisions are postponed, and so on in a circle. It is better to decisively set priorities clumsily at first than to waste energy on endless reflections and not decide. Living without priorities is extremely harmful for determination and development. Nothing will work if you don’t know how to determine what is most important to you right now. The good news is that this can be learned. Bad is that it takes a long time. Excellent one is that you will get a vital skill in the modern world.
