Merely doing things isn’t enough to create the best chance for making progress.
Doing many things isn’t enough to create the best chance for making progress.
Doing the right things however — going out of your way to focus on the things things with the greatest chance of creating impact — does offer you and your team the best chance of making progress.
Not all inputs yield the same output:
Not all e-mails are equally valuable and worthy of responding to.
Not all meetings are equally valuable and worthy of attending.
Not all projects are equally valuable and worthy of engaging.
You do not have to look too close to recognize that some e-mails, meetings, projects, and other forms of effort will invariably align better to your longterm goals and therefore deserve more attention.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and have an out-of-control to-do list and calendar, the first right thing to do is to pick the right things — the activities you’ve though about and determined to be the most impactful — and to ruthlessly cut out everything else.
99% of the time, fragmented attention is responsible for creating busyness and lighting our hairs on fire.
Work doesn’t have to be crazy.