How to focus more clearly

I’ve always been close with my Nanna. I’ve turned to her a lot over the years as I’ve juggled kids, work, study, friends, relationships and everything in between. She’s been saying the same thing to me, and for years, I’ve been rejecting it.

“You can’t do everything.”

This is one of the most frustrating truisms I’ve heard. I can hardly write it without bristling. My instinct is to rebel: I can do it all! Just watch me!

But Nan’s pretty bang on. You can do everything… sort of, but you don’t do it very well. When you try to do everything at once, the most important things don’t get enough attention, diluting your potential for impact.

“You can do anything, but not everything” – David Allen

The same logic applies at work. We all have a finite amount of time, energy and resources available. Equally dividing our attention among every competing urgent matter on our desk does no justice to the relative importance of each task or request.

That’s not to say setting focused priorities is easy. We’re not choosing between right and wrong here – it’s ALL the right stuff. It seems too late to make priority decisions when we’re overwhelmed and figuring out how to catch up. It all needs doing! Fast!

This isn’t true, though, is it? When everything truly hits the fan - sick kids, natural disasters, bereavements - we know exactly what to do. Total clarity about what matters enables us to quickly make important calls about the most important stuff and put that first.

We need to get better at making judgement calls in non-SNAFU circumstances. The reality is that when we're drowning in stuff, we can't do everything. If we don’t set our own priorities, we are kidding ourselves about the results.

Intention matters.

Without intention, we are like ostriches, burying our heads in the sand. What gets done might matter, but it might not—we've avoided making tough decisions, so we don't know. Worse, we push the priority decisions to our teams, who must make tough calls at the front line.

The good news is that, just like when the SNAFUs hit, clarity of purpose and a big-picture perspective can help us make tough calls.

How to focus on what matters most:

1. Pull your head out of the sand - ostriches make terrible leaders. Get your facts straight about what’s going on.

2. Decide what matters - based on the consequences of inaction and where you can make the most difference. Problems are not created equally.

3. Understand your why – when you are clear about your purpose and values, you can decide what matters much more easily.