Thousands To Three

Post-It Notes. Everywhere. Scattered on my desk, all over my walls, and on the edges of my monitor.

Then, there's my Google calendar full of appointments with many of them blocking out time to do stuff. On top of this there is my CRM tracking all my clients and the tasks I need to do for each of them. And, finally there is my online task management system with all my admin and back-of-house-tasks.

But, there's more. Voice memo's to myself with hair-brain/ground breaking ideas as well as notebooks a plenty with reviews, observations and thinking of all kinds.

There are literally thousands of things I want to do, try, or experiment with. But, there isn't enough time, resource, or energy to slightly dent the pile of stuff I could try.

Sound familiar? I'm certain I am not the only one given the daily conversations I have with friends, and coaching calls with clients where they show me their calendars and their ways of working. It is why I ward people off podcasts and books, as the last thing we need is the sense of 'more things we should be doing'.

So how can we get on top of it all? What is the way in which we can clear down the confusion and audit the clutter?

In many recent conversations during workshops and coaching programs I've been using a few tools successfully, so here are some insights you may find beneficial.

Get Up High (Distillation)

Are we thinking long and wide enough? A client came to me last year wanting to run a workshop with his leadership team. His brief to me was to run a workshop to help the group strategise on ways to 10x their business (as opposed to another year of incremental growth). It was a stimulating thought, and in many ways the right thought.

Investing in tasks to survive another week (or year!) is not fun, and can cripple our energy through decision fatigue and down right boredom. Being in a state of constant survival pumps cortisol into our systems and risks Cushing Syndrome. But, it also lowers our IQ leading to silly mistakes and poor strategies (page 59, The Rhythm Effect.)

The alternative is to climb way up high onto a summit, or get in a plane, or become a bird (any metaphor related to ZOOMING OUT!)

I encourage people to do an old fashioned SWOT. It isn't sexy nor is it revelatory, but the insights it provides can be. Whatever mechanism you use, it is the act of looking for the one, two, or three major focuses (Movers) in line with a clear direction that will help distill the task list into the few critical activities worth focusing on.  

We are looking to answer the question, What are the key drivers of influence?

Other ways to ask this question:

• What will influence decisions?

• What will influence thinking?

• What will influence problem solving?

• What will influence task completion?

• What will influence deadline achievement?

• What will influence budget adhesion?

• What will influence targets being hit?

Recently, Robert Green (Author of Mastery, Power, War, and many other game changer books) discussed in an interview that most people simply look too close to their nose. They miss the bigger picture and sheer possibility the world offers. Zoom out and see the wider context, it will help to cut the nonsense out of your task lists.

The 5xM Framework is the tried and tested Strategic Structure with more detail than most businesses require. Movers are the initiatives we use for a specific time within the overall Strategy. They are fuel everyone in a business temporarily focuses on the drive the Key Results Areas (KRA's). Those able to identify the most relevant and impactful Movers will generally elevate their competitive advantage.

Go Top Left Bin (Triage)

When prioritising, most turn to the Eisenhower or Covey Quadrants. This is the one with the axes Important versus Urgent. It is useful, but only in the right contexts. For me, if I am trying to order my day's work, or audit my weekly practices then this is an excellent tool. It forces accountability into where I am spending my time and what activities are nudging me off course.

But, strategically I feel we can do better. Off the back of the Six Sigma movement came a model I find helpful to delineate between the strategic 'worth doings' and the 'not worth doings'. No fancy name here - it is called the Impact versus Effort Matrix.

Take all the possible activities you are thinking about doing. Plot them all onto the one matrix and compare. It takes a little homework and your professional feel to get this right but the results are validating at the least, but often eye opening and confidence inspiring.

The theory tells us that the top left corner, much like a Mohamed Salah trademark left footer off the wing is the go zone. Top right is high risk and bottom left is low value, while the bottom right is the no-go-zone.

A handy tool to triage the high priority (and impactful) initiatives from the rest.

Brutally Kill Off (Cull)

If you look at the origins of the word 'decide' you will find it comes from the Latin 'to cut off'. If we look words such as pesticide, genocide, and homicide we can see a pattern forming. The end of all these words uses the same ending originating from the Latin caedere. Direct translation - kill.

To decide is to literally kill off options. One of the hardest things we need to do is kill off ideas. Ideas we think are good, or we love, or we hope are the answer to the problems we are trying to solve.

I have seen people wrestle with this as often we are much more emotionally invested in our ideas than we are willing to admit. The emotion tends to run harder and deeper the more senior our leadership position or if we are the owner of the business. In these scenarios our individual investment is high and the stakes are more meaningful.

But, those able to do the thinking, clear the deck of the thousands of 'possibles', and decide on the few chosen actions to pursue are the ones most likely to succeed by staying in flow for longer and more often (Why and when does multitasking impair flow and subjective performance? Frontiers, July 2024).

My own experience is that we will continue to fall into the trap of wanting and hoping to do a lot more stuff than is possible. It will be crippling and obstruct the very results we are aiming to achieve. From an individual and leadership perspective, those clever enough to inject a little strategic craft into their practices will accelerate. By clearing down the thousands of possibilities for an alternative of three focuses to drive with purpose is powerful.

It may be a quarterly review or clear down. It may be that you start with one practice and stack others on top. Whatever the mechanism you use, know the way forward is to distill, triage, and cull.