045 - ❗️ The Priorities Issue

Hi,

We’re focusing on priorities today.

How to prioritise, What to prioritise first and Why we need to prioritise.

Life only ever seems to get busier, so hopefully this helps you as much as it helped me to write it.

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😀

💭 Three things you need to know:

❗️Prioritise Your To Do List

If you’re anything like me, you bloody love a to-do list.

And if you’re anything like me, you love to overdo a to-do list.

A super long to-do list isn’t particularly useful in helping you get stuff done - it does a better job at making you think ‘Sh*t, I have got a lot to do’. So, what’s the solution?

I present to you: the Effort-Impact matrix. It’s a useful way to prioritise an ever-growing to-do list, or list of things to do on a given day.

I think the best way to read this is up for interpretation, but my take is:

1. Prioritise the easy, high impact activities

2. Figure out when you’re able to make time to do the harder, but equally important tasks, and then do them

3. Sort through the high effort, low impact tasks and work out if they’re really worth it. If not, delete or give them to someone else

4. Deal with the rest of the low impact tasks - e.g. email - once the higher priority things have been done.

This ties nicely into ‘The Daily Highlight’.

⚡️ The Daily Highlight

Leaving the low impact tasks (cough, email) until after the higher impact tasks are completed is the basis of the Daily Highlight.

It’s separate to the humble to-do list. The to-do list is a second brain for all the things you need to do but don’t want to have to remember off the top of your head.

The Daily Highlight, on the other hand. is the one thing you absolutely have to get done today.

This is the one main thing that, when you go to bed, you’re happy has been completed.

If something else tries to take priority, compare it to your Daily Highlight and see if it’s more important.

Usually, it’ll be more of a distraction than be more important, so this is a great way to stop being derailed from your main task for the day.

I find this helpful, as focusing on my main priority for the day and getting it done frees up a bit of a mental clarity for the next thing that I can then focus on.

One good interpretation of the Daily Highlight is to work on this first thing, while your energy is up and you are yet to be distracted.

Avoiding work emails until mid-late morning is a superpower, and a great way to get the Daily Highlight done.

🙋🏻‍♂️ Prioritise Your Life - Before Someone Does Else Does

— Greg Keown, Essentialism

✅ Two Recommendations:

🌄 7 Days in Yosemite (Youtube)

I watched this before bed last night. It’s incredibly peaceful, and an amazing location-first view of Yosemite. It’s really cool how the guy in the video, Harmen Hoek, makes the film much more about the setting than himself. I can’t recommend this video enough.

📉 You Probably Shouldn’t Work In A Startup

Here’s an interesting piece by Evan Armstrong (via Every) about why start up life is looked at with glasses that are way too far on the rose tinted end - not least due to pop culture.

I’m sharing this more because I thought it was interesting - I’m sure a start up would still be an amazing experience overall.

💬 And finally, one quote

Thanks!

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Cheers!

📸 BONUS: Photo of the Week