Tell me if you’ve heard this before:
“None of these things will happen unless we prioritize all of them.”
- Your inner self, or some demanding boss you had
Yes, we all know this fatal flaw. When we prioritize everything, we’ve de facto prioritized nothing. When we distribute our effort across too much work, we’ve diffused our effectiveness.
This isn’t new.
But this thought can come from a few different places. It can come from the fear of what will happen when goals are not accomplished—which is usually a byproduct of our expectations and how we judge our self-worth. It can also come from ambition, which is the belief that we can do anything and so why not think big and take it all on?
Both are ineffective.
So, what’s the solution?
A good place to start is considering what you can’t not do. Evaluating what we just can’t not do is a good way to uncover what’s truly important to us or our work. After we learn a little more about the core of our work, we can add other work to our plates.
Thinking big is for power users only. It only works if you’ve already had practice at achieving big things. If not, it’s too easy to be overwhelmed and quit. Thinking small gives you the repetitions and small wins to confidently move onto bigger things.
I’m seriously tired of all the “think so big your dreams scare you” rhetoric. It’s just not helping because it’s not practical for most people. It doesn’t put people in a position where they can sustain their work output for the long game.
So, yes, part of the solution is learning to prioritize, but the other part is simply learning how hungry you are and how much food to put on your plate.
I don’t know about you, but these lessons seem so easy when writing about them. Yet, they are so easy to stumble over when we face them in our lives.
I hope this reminder serves you this week.