DO LESS TO ACHIEVE MORE

People ask me to help them achieve their priorities. They wrestle with interruptions and distractions, struggling to make space to work on what truly matters.

But prioritisation requires a context. We need to understand what truly matters if we are to make day-by-day decisions about what to do next, and what to put off for later.

What do you value deeply? What does success look like in the next season? What are you aiming to achieve this week? And what is the very next task required today?

Without a context, you cannot confront the whirlwind of digital activity that marks modern knowledge work. When you get that meeting request, the next email, and a colleague requesting help in the moment, you need a reference point through which to make a decision. If not, "yes" will be your default, and your time will remain at the mercy of whatever comes your way.

In this article, I'll share a helpful framework to help to you identify what truly matters, enabling you to say "NO" for a greater "YES!"

One Not Many

A Russian Proverb speaks volumes to our modern-day conundrum: "If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one."

The digital workplace is a flurry of activity where every department, team, and individual chases multiple rabbits simultaneously.

Interestingly, the Latin root for our modern word "priority" is 'prior,' meaning "first." Until the 20th Century, 'priority' meant just that—the first thing that matters. It's a singular term, not plural.¹ However, with concept creep, we now talk about 'priorities' for everything. Instead of focusing on 'the thing,' we have 'one of many things,' reducing our ability to make the tough decisions required to determine which rabbit to focus on and which rabbits to let run wild.

So, we end up doing so many tasks that we achieve nothing of substance.

The secret to saying "no" or "not yet" is to become clearer about our first thing. What is our 'prior' in work? What is our 'rabbit' in life? Only by discovering our greater "yes" can we create a context for everyday prioritisation.

Subtraction Not Addition

I can hear your objection. This sounds great in theory but this can't work in my organisation. We have seven company pillars, twenty-five priority projects, with each department vying for time and input. Even if I set a 'prior,' I still have meetings to attend, messages to react to, and emails to avoid!

This is true. It is hard to focus on priority projects in the whirlwind of life. But this can't be an excuse for having no priority. Rather than succumbing to an ad hoc, notification-based workflow, responding to whatever comes our way through MS Teams and email, we need to take back control of our workflow. It's even more critical in this environment that we know our most important goal, project, and tasks. Without this level of clarity, we can never build mature, agile, and responsive time-management systems to achieve what really matters in a workplace designed for chasing a colony of rabbits.

The secret to finding your "greater yes," therefore, is through subtraction, not addition. It requires that we learn to eliminate, reduce, outsource, delegate, and automate. Rather than continually adding, it is about making space.

A Practical Way To Discover Your "Yes"

There’s a beautiful storytelling technique that I learned from a Catholic nun many years ago. When teaching children a story from the Bible in Sunday School, she would ask the question: “What part of the story could we remove and still have the story?”

Her reason for asking this question was to help children discover the core of the story, where the deepest meaning is found.

Take the Christmas Nativity as an example. If you remove the donkey, you still have the story. If you remove King Herod, you still have the story. If you remove the shepherds or wise men, you lose some of the rich texture and meaning, but you still have the story. But take away baby Jesus? No, you have no story. So by eliminating different events and characters from the narrative, you discover the “prior” of the Christmas story.

Religion aside, I find this technique invaluable when determining my work and life priorities. What parts of the 'story' can I remove from my business and still have the narrative intact?

For example, if I remove Amazon Advertising, I still have a story. If I don’t update my website or write a monthly blog post, like this one, the core story persists. However, if I cease making space to think deeply, read voraciously, and reflect on the problems my clients are trying to solve, my work loses its meaning. Without this space, the quality of my message suffers, the value of my services diminishes, and clients may no longer be willing to pay a premium for what I do.

By eliminating, I’ve found my greater 'yes'—it is to make space for deep thinking and to help others do the same.

Now, of course, I still advertise books, update websites, and write articles for my blog. But this is not the rabbit that I’m chasing. Rather, every 3-6 months, I determine what my most important project might be, related to my greater “yes” of helping people make space. Then I give unbalanced attention to this one thing.

Sure, I have several smaller projects that impact my time - these are my second, third, and fourth most important activities. But knowing the order of what matters most gives me the ability to plan my schedule, shape my to-do list, and make in-the-moment decisions about what to react and respond to, even in the whirlwind.

Now Discover Your Greater "Yes"

To take the next step, I encourage you to make space to think about your ‘first’ in work and life.

Ask yourself, what parts of the story can you remove and still have the story?

Identify projects that are non-prior, discern meetings that add little value, and identify habits that distract you from the main thing. Continue to eliminate, reduce, delegate, outsource, and automate until you make space to focus on what matters most. Then, keep your 'big yes' in your mind, front and centre, providing a context for setting priorities and making space with your precious time.

If you need more information, I encourage you to download my free productivity eBook and audiobook—"How To Say "No" For A Greater "YES!"

Or dive deeper by investigating my Priority Samurai training or Productivity Masterclass coaching.

What is the most important part of your story, and what is one change you can make to make progress this week?

¹Kudos to Gary Keller and Jay Papason who described the etymology of the word 'prioritisation' in their book, 'The One Thing,' p. 147.