You're Trying To Do Too Much

The second pitfall to getting things done is that people try and do too much at once; they don’t undertake the discipline of prioritization and they get overwhelmed making a little bit of progress on a whole bunch of different things – instead of making a lot of progress on a few, key things.

When you try and do too much, you don’t actually get anything done well. 

First, in last week’s newsletter we discussed how to avoid getting stuck in the status quo and one key was to envision the future state and create a list of your goals. Now, for just a moment look back at your list of goals in your future state. If you were limited to just three goals that you would pursue today, which three would you choose? 

Take a moment to write those three goals down.

Now, take one more moment and think about if you could choose three more. Which would be your next set of three? 

How did you choose your lists of three? If you’re like most people – and like me – you went with instinct. What feels important? What feels like it matters? 

But there’s a better, more systematic way to figure out which set of goals you should be prioritizing. Yes, it’s an art, not a science – but there is a method to it.

There are two filters that you can apply to your goals to understand which ones to prioritize.

The first is impact. How much change is this going to drive? Is this going to have a compounding effect? In other words, will it enable you to achieve other goals and unlock more potential? Will it change something in your business model or related to your mission? Will that change be significant? 

These are all questions you can ask to assess impact – and you can use whatever scale makes sense to you. You can use a scale of 1-10 or can you bucket into high, medium, and low impact items. 

Second, degree of difficulty and timeline. Some goals are incredibly impactful – but they’re also extremely complex or difficult to achieve. You need to understand difficulty so that you can understand how many goals you can take on at once. 

You probably can’t take on ten goals today if every single one of them is incredibly complex or difficult. You might only be able to take on two or three. 

Do these goals require new processes or systems? Are they deeply integrated with other systems? How many steps are required to achieve the goal and how much is required in each step? Are the steps interdependent? How long is it going to take?

Remember, this is not an exact science and it’s not one-and-done. Over time and even throughout the planning process, you’ll learn more about the impact and difficulty of each goal. You will have to revisit your prioritization on a regular basis.

That doesn’t mean quitting just because something turned out to be harder than you thought – but it does mean that you need to be clear-eyed about revising your assessments and, yes, your priorities, when required.