Prioritisation = Having the courage to leave things undone

When people talk about prioritisation, they often mean getting more done.
Most of us already know how to make a list or organise a diary, and there are a number of tools and apps to help with that.

However, in a world where expectations and demands are every increasing, along with the pace of delivery and change, the real challenge is deciding what doesn’t make the list in the first place.
We’re rapidly approaching the summer season, when time pressures become even more pronounced as we try and complete things before we go off on our breaks. And prioritisation can sometimes become difficult. But lack of it and we see the stress rising, we become reactive rather proactive, we don’t necessarily focus on the right things and our team members feel our stress.

As leaders and managers, we’re surrounded by competing demands. Emails arrive faster than we can answer them, meetings fill the calendar – before we know it, we’ve spent an entire day being busy, only to realise we’ve made very little progress on the things that matter most.

Recognise that every “yes” comes at the expense of something else

At Mastering Mindset the leaders and managers we see making the greatest impact aren’t necessarily those who work the longest hours. It’s the ones who have the clarity and confidence to make conscious choices about where to invest their time, focus and energy. They recognise that every “yes” comes at the expense of something else, whether that’s creating a new project or plan, developing their people or simply creating the headspace to think clearly and strategicaly.

We believe that prioritisation is now even more about mindset than it is about efficiency and productivity. Having the courage to purposeful choose to leave certain things undone. It takes discipline to resist the pull of urgency (especially someone else’s urgency!), and it takes reflection to address the assumptions and behaviours getting in the way of taking things off the list, and focussing instead on what will have the greatest impact and has the highest immediacy.

Coaching is a very powerful way to create the foundation, behaviours and habits to enable this to occur. And occur regularly.

The most important decision you can now make, with confidence and calm, is actually deciding WHAT CAN WAIT.

If you would like us to help you, your teams or your managers and leaders with this then please do get in contact.