Did you know that the word priority was never plural until the 1940s-ish?
Think about it.
It makes sense.
Priority means The Most Important Thing.
How can there be more than one?
Yet as leaders and within organizations, we have endless lists of priorities. Too many.
Research tells us that, to be effective, we should focus on at most three projects at one time.
Any more, and we’re spread too thin, trying to track too much, and heading straight for overwhelm and our current most-used term: burnout.
Take a look at what you’re focusing on.
If you – or your team – have more than two or three projects under way, you have a to-do list, not a priority list.
You may have no way around that. You may have been handed this to-do list by your leadership. You may feel like you can’t push back.
But I encourage you to try, anyway. You’ll get more done faster if you focus on just those top two or three priorities (yes, I yield to the current-day approach of more than one priority), instead of trying to spread yourself thin, like too little peanut butter over too much bread.
You can’t create more time than you have. But you can get more done in the time you have by focusing your efforts.
What’s most important in your organization? And do your mid-level leaders understand what that is? Well enough to explain it to their teams, so they know what to focus on? It’s easy to get “all over the place” with what you think isimportant. So if you’re curious to explore what being more focused might look like, let’s talk.