Give yourself less time

As founders, it can be so challenging to prioritize.

There’s an endless to-do list, people relying on us, our own goals, our stakeholders’ goals, and so many opportunities and ideas we could possibly pursue.

How do you step back and figure out what’s most important?

One way is to meet with an advisor! 💁🏻‍♀️

But here’s another trick that I love: When you don’t have enough time to tackle your to-do list, try pretending you have even less time.

• What if something happened this week that took you away from your business, entirely?

• What if you only had 3 hours to work this week before being completely off the grid?

• What would you do with those 3 hours?

Here’s the thing: Seeing what’s most important for your business is HARD when you’re actively working on it.

An outside perspective is one way to get out of that. But we can also sometimes tap into extra prioritization superpowers by enlisting time as a forcing function.

Want to go further?

• Now decide what you’d do next if you had one more hour.

• ...If you had a single day?

• ...Now if you had half the week?

Et voilà! These are your priorities, in order of importance.

Is it possible you’ve missed some things? Yes - especially tasks that are important but not urgent. If you’re missing some of those, just add them in.

The point isn’t a perfect list;

The point is to tap into what really needs to happen to push your business forward this week.

…Speaking of, it’s 11am on a Friday! I’m giving you [looks at watch] exactly 3 more hours to get work done before it’s time to sign off to enjoy last days of summer.

What are you going to do with them?