The Art of Prioritization

“I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for that”. This rhetoric has steadily crept into our lives, and nothing feels good about it. Top CEOs around the world will tell you that they navigate their busy days while still enjoying life by practicing "ruthless prioritization". But how do you ruthlessly prioritize when everything is a priority?

Laura Vanderkam, a specialist on time management and productivity, offers insightful advice in her TED Talk -  How to gain control of your free time. She explains that we all have 168 hrs in a week, and she believes that even after accounting for sleep and work, we still have ample time available. Prioritizing effectively means ranking tasks objectively. People assume that it's about squeezing in extra minutes here and there to carve out more time in their day for the good stuff. However, Laura argues that this approach is flawed. She asserts, “we don’t build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want and then time saves itself”. Time is highly elastic. While we can’t create more of it, it will stretch to accommodate what we choose to prioritize. Rather than saying, “I don’t have time to do X”, we can reframe it as, “I don’t do X, because it’s not my priority”. 

“It’s not my priority” is in fact a more accurate statement than “I don’t have time”. I find this phrase quite powerful. It helps me put things into perspective and re-prioritize accordingly. Think about it - if your child’s school calls you to pick them up because they’re sick while you’re having an hectic day at work, your initial thought might be, “Argh, I don’t have time for this.” I know, it’s the frustration of the busyness speaking, and you’ll probably feel guilty for having these thoughts. But would you say “it’s not my priority”? Clearly, taking care of your sick child is a top priority, and you’ll manage to re-arrange work and life around this impromptu situation. In this case, work is not your immediate priority and saying “work is not my priority” acknowledges that your child clearly is - (guilt-free). The key is to treat our priorities as a burning fire. We get to choose what we want to do with our time. Not everything is a burning fire. 

Another aspect often overlooked in discussions about prioritization is the importance of deciding what to delegate, automate, or eliminate from our to-do list. In other words, prioritizing what you will no longer do. You can be incredibly efficient at ticking boxes on your to-do list, but that does not equate to being effective. True effectiveness comes from concentrating on the right goals and what is genuinely significant and impactful. By saying ‘no’ to certain tasks or commitments, you create space to say ‘yes’ to what truly matters.