Setting priorities

What first…?

You are being asked where to start, when you cannot do everything at once.

Go deeper · the full lesson · 50 minutes · C1Ninety Days and Thirteen Thousand BricksOpen the lesson →

The lens

  1. What is urgent, and what is only loud? Urgent means a cost is arriving soon. Loud means someone is shouting.
  2. Which few things cause most of the trouble? Look for the vital few, not the long tail.
  3. What depends on what? Some tasks unblock all the rest.

It can lead to

  • Do now Urgent, important, or blocking everything else.
  • Do next, with a date Important, but not yet urgent.
  • Hand it on Someone else can do it as well as you can.
  • Leave it, and say so Saying “not now” is part of the answer.

The thinking, step by step

A worked example

We have six open problems and one engineer. Where do we start?

  1. Urgent: the payment errors, because orders are failing now.
  2. The vital few: payments and the slow login together cause most of the complaints.
  3. Dependencies: the other fixes cannot be tested until payments work.
  4. Leave: the typos on the website.

How it might soundI’d start with the payment errors, because they are stopping orders today and the other fixes depend on them. The slow login comes second, as it affects most users. The typos can wait, and I would tell people that clearly.

Where it breaks. When everything really is urgent, or when people disagree about the ranking itself.

Practise it

Thinking tools

Real cases

Talk it through

  1. What was loud in your work last week, and what was actually important?
  2. Which one or two causes produce most of the trouble in your work? How do you know?
  3. How do you tell a colleague “not now” without losing their trust?
Then say it
Land itpoint · reason · stopPause ita beat, not an “um”Hold itfirm and calm