I read a great book called “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown where he defines focus on the “Priority” not multiple priorities. I’m a fan of the book and the craft of reducing the important things to fewer.
I feel that one of the blessings of the 2020 is that it focused my efforts on the important things in my life. It made it very clear what my priorities are.
“You are what you prioritize.”
This was either a proverb or I read it somewhere on Twitter… which is really just a huge book of proverbs. If I prioritize lion taming, I would be a lion tamer. If I prioritize swimming in the ocean, I would be a mermaid.
I’ve been thinking about three things in regards to prioritization:
What it takes for something to be my priority?
What triggers a re-prioritization?
How do you become someone else’s priority?
For me, the decision making is fairly simple. It’s “Family, Boost Alumni, Boost Strategy” some days in that order, some days in different orders (my wife will chuckle at that).
However, at times, there are time based events that occur that need to the lead spot. For lack of a better term - emergencies - will always take the immediate priority. So one way to re-prioritize is when there is a sense of urgency:
Child gets hurt and needs to go to the hospital
Company loses term sheet and has one month of money
You discover the existence of aliens and must dedicate time to it
You get the idea
So another question for startups to ponder is “How do you become someone else’ priority?”
In regards to customers or fundraising, this is probably one of the most important questions to focus on. You must already have to fit into someone else’ list of priorities in order to sell them or build a relationship with them.
Does anyone else find it funny that I focused on three aspects of prioritization on my post about “one priority.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯