In my coaching, training and consulting activities, I encounter again and again the same phenomenon: people say they prioritize – but in effect they don’t. And those who really do are those that rise to be successful.
What is true prioritization? To put it simply, it is not to do what is not deemed to be a priority. That sounds simple but that is where most of us fail.
Everybody can run some kind of prioritization scheme and decide that some actions are indeed, priority actions. But when it comes to stopping to do the rest, that is where people stall. Objections abound, caused by our fear of being threatened by unexpected events. For example, lately I was giving a course on project risk management; and when I came to saying that people should drop any action that was not in the top-10 priority list and merely monitor those risks, all sorts of excuses were given. Of course, a risk might materialize that was not in the priority list, but does that mean that we should not focus our attention and limited action capability to truly critical actions? If the risk is not in the priority list, it is less important and less essential (by definition), compared to those that are really critical!
It’s tough but necessary: true prioritization is about not doing what is not deemed a priority. You can monitor these things, but focused action will be much more effective than spreading your time and attention chasing too many things at the same time. Prioritize truly and multiply your impact on the world by easily a factor of 5 to 10!
