Deprioritize—the art of removing current or planned activities.
An executive leader mentioned recently he’d had a two-year wait time on his to-do list.
The list sat – untouched – on a whiteboard in his office. Every day it stared at him. Weighing down his motivation as he focused on more immediate and urgent tasks.
One morning, he realized that nothing on that list mattered after two years. If it hadn't happened already, it wasn't necessary. So he deprioritized it all. He wiped the list and removed the burden.
Reflecting on over 100 different coaching conversations in the past 12 months—leaders consistently tell me they have too much to do.
Their plates are full, and they're struggling to manage it all. They're up early to try and beat the rush, and they're up late to try and finish it all.
To-do lists. Strategy meetings. Prioritization calls.
The most burn-out-prone of them try and hold it all together, imagining they're protecting their teams from exhaustion by piling more and more work on themselves.
The disheartened managers plow on, doing what they can with what they've got, constantly feeling like somehow they're behind.
There are prioritization apps everywhere. A quick google search (with 163 million hit results) gave me articles such as the "33 best apps for prioritizing work." Ironic really—even they couldn't pick out one as a clear top choice from the plethora on offer. Prioritizing the priority apps left 33 options to explore. It's exhausting.
Originally a word from the late 14th century, priority is about a state of being earlier than something else. Or earlier in ranking and right.
In modern times, we've removed the idea of earlier and instead instituted competition. Competing priorities. Mine. Yours. Our teams. Continuous competing priorities.
So when there's too much on your plate, how do you begin to make a change?
Deprioritize.
Also known as “Embracing the art of removing current or planned activities."
There are three clear actions to take when deprioritizing:
Simplify by asking, "what can we remove?" What can we take away to make work/our week/this job more straightforward, engaging, and valuable?
Clean up the "to-do" backlog (remove/erase)
Screen actions by asking, "does this move us closer to our vision/goals?"
Any one of these three deprioritizing activities—slowing down in order to speed up—will create a significant lift and shift your ability to gain clarity, direction, focus, and momentum.
So, what's your next step?
Start small. Deprioritize one thing.
Simplify. Clean-up. Screen. Repeat.
What do you need to put off your plate, so you can focus on what's most important?