The art of ruthless prioritisation
“Ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary?” — Marcus Aurelius
Every day and in every moment we should be asking ourselves this one simple question - is this necessary?
I do this every day at work, much to my own frustrations and to the frustration of those around me.
But time is finite, we start with a limited amount so we have to make sure we prioritise how we spend it.
During my time working at Facebook, this ethos was drilled into me - "ruthless prioritisation" - do what is needed and remain focused on the goal.
After all, if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority.
The average life expectancy is around 80 years old, and men typically have 5 less years than women.
At work, we have roughly 40 hours per week, and our day may include 8 hours working, and often less than 8 hours sleeping and 8 hours for ourselves.
So use the time wisely and at every moment, ask yourself - is this necessary?
Software Engineering Student @ Western Governors University | Python, Javascript, React, AWS, SQL
1 个月Hey John! I appreciate this wisdom and thus is the struggle of human identity, meaning, and purpose. I like to think about life as a video game and at the very end of it all, the player gets to see all of the stats. Time played, experienced earned, good deeds, bad deeds, mistakes, and efforts made. Therefor, I live in such a way where I question if my time spent is optimal, while also radically accepting that I was not the designer of this environment, or the character traits I possess. With this, I've learned to focus on high value efforts that I can change and to accept everything outside of that control as exactly that.......out of my control and a waste of time.