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The magic number of priorities
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Hi Reader Welcome to Rev Up for the Week, where every Sunday at 4.05pm UK time, I drop a little thought into your inbox to push your week forward. This week is a simple one. I want to talk about priorities. But not just 'priorities' as a concept.... No. I want to talk about YOUR priorities. We're all expected to have clear priorities - and being able to articulate them clearly is one of the smartest things you can do for yourself and one of the kindest things you can do for your team. Prioritising is also a hugely underrated skill. Much of the investigative thinking in our jobs can now be outsourced to chatGPT, but prioritising? When the demands on us are so huge, when the world moves fast and when we're juggling a hundred projects and stakeholders, staying clear on what matters most takes skill. And it's both art and science. I think prioritising will be one of the last aspects that we can truly trust AI to handle for us. As Henry Ford once said, "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few engage in it." So how many priorities do you have this week? If you're like most people, the answer is "several". People answering this question in double digits is not uncommon when I ask it. So go on. Count them. How many priorities do you have for the week ahead? I want to give you a harsh but important truth. If you have a dozen priorities, or even five or six priorities... you have no priorities. Starting a day with some level of choice or autonomy over what to work on, I'd suggest the magic numbers look like this: 1 priority for the morning. 1 priority for the afternoon. (And maaaaybe if they're small things, you can hit both of them hard in the morning and fit in a third somewhere. Maybe.). Two each day means that when we think about the week ahead, that we can have ten priorities, right? Wrong. By Wednesday, you'll have three new things on your plate that you couldn't even imagine now. So right now, let's limit your weekly priorities list to three things. So. 2 priorities for Monday. 3 for the week as a whole. Anything beyond that, and you're no longer clear about what really matters. Make space for what matters this week. Have a good one, Graham |
Rev Up for the Week with Graham Allcott
Join thousands of people starting their week on a positive note. Every Sunday afternoon, I send out an upbeat idea to set you up for the week ahead.
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