The Problem With Priorities and Why You Should Dump Them

In executive coaching, two conjoined goals or challenges emerge repeatedly. They come from a leader’s common challenge in determining:

• “What is the most important thing for me/us to focus on?”
• “How do I focus on the most important thing?”

The Problem with Priorities

The problem with priorities is plurality. When many activities or goals appear to be — or actually are –important it’s difficult to:

• Know where to focus
• Maintain your focus

It’s easy for leaders to assume that the path to success is to learn to work harder and juggle more.

But it’s interesting to discover that the highest performing leaders, those who have and maintain outsized impact don’t do plural.

They focus. They create focus if it doesn’t exist. They force focus even when there is resistance.

Average performers pride themselves in their ability to “walk and chew gum.” They believe it separates them from low performers. And perhaps it does. But it doesn’t make them high performers.

Two reasons:

• They get confused about which is most important at any given time. Am I trying to walk? Or chew gum?
• They think, “Since I can both walk and chew gum, I should also be to carry on a conversation while clapping to a syncopated beat. All at the same time.”

They start to confuse success with the ability to do more at once. What they end up with is feeling busy and overwhelmed. And they forget, if they ever knew, what the most important thing is.

High performers are never confused about what is most important. And the least important is never allowed to interfere with the most important.

A Little Word History

The word priority worked its way into the English language sometime in the 15th century. At the time, it meant something like, “the first thing.” This had double meanings: Something that comes first sequentially and something that is of greater importance.

The plural word “priorities” was rarely ever used from the 15th century all the way until the 1940s. From then on, “priorities” takes off.

I don’t know if people were more focused back in the 15th century. Maybe. Maybe not.

But I have lived in countries where 15th-century technology and culture are alive and well. In those countries, accomplishing the basic tasks of life take up most of your day.

I had to slowly learn to give up my “To-do” lists for the day. If I wanted to get anything done, I often had to pick just one priority for the day. Today is shopping. Tomorrow is laundry. The day after is the post office.

In those countries, life is rarely simple and idyllic. Only tourists who aren’t trying to accomplish anything will describe them that way.

In reality, there are just as many, perhaps even more, distractions, frustrations, and interruptions. That’s why so few things can get done.

But what they don’t have, culturally, is the illusion of being able to do everything all at once.

Modern technology, instead of freeing us from having to do a lot of work, has encouraged us to try to do even more work.

We get excited about more work. We lose track of what is the right work.

You can accomplish much more by trying to do less.

The solution is to have less ambition. Set big goals. But aim to do less towards them on a daily and weekly and monthly basis.

Do less. Attempt less.

But be very intentional about what you will attempt. And then be relentless in your execution.

A single, purposeful step forward, every day, will gain you more ground in a year than running in circles ever will.

Take good care,

Christian

Originally published at https://www.christianmuntean.com on February 21, 2023.