3 Steps to Win Your Day with Purposeful Priorities
Most people treat their days like they're in a zombie apocalypse.
They frantically run around, trying to find ways to stay alive. Unfortunately, most of these survivors become victims and morph into ugly beasts that never recover, infecting chaos on everyone they encounter.
That used to be me.
I still have days when my ADHD flares up and affects my novelty-seeking brain. But this usually happens on days when I let stress get the best of me, or my sleep quality is compromised, and I become a time management dipshit.
So, what's the solution?
The solution lies in controlling your days and not letting the day or things control you. It might seem impossible, and you might be right on some days, but overall, it's more than possible.
It'll require more focus and discipline on your part.
If everything is important, nothing is, so you must make choices. For business, Jeff Sands says it best in Corporate Turnaround Artistry:
"Contrary to what many creative entrepreneurs believe, strategy is the elimination of options. Every entrepreneur has dozens of opportunities, but strategy is set by the discipline to focus on the one or two opportunities that make long‐term sense for the business. The smartest entrepreneurs get into a business with their exit plan already mapped out. Of course, there are all sorts of surprises along the way, but these entrepreneurs know where they are headed and will get there eventually."
This applies to your life as well.
When you don't focus, you'll:
Waste time.
Be more stressed.
Produce mediocre results.
Do a lot, but progress little.
Teach your team the wrong habits.
The impact of poor focus is substantial, so you need to learn to focus on creating a purpose-filled day.
Start with these three productivity cheat codes.
1/ Everything starts with guiding values and a core mission.
Values are how you make critical decisions in your life.
It's how you "act."
Without values, you become a pawn, easily manipulated and persuaded by someone else's agenda. If you don't have a list of values, that's okay; spend thirty minutes making a list of your top five values. Then, rank them in importance.
Filter every decision you make through your value system, starting from the top.
One of my core life values is "Family is Everything: I am a devoted husband and father, and my #1 priority is always supporting and being present with my family."
Your life will instantly improve when you live a life based on a hierarchy of values. So will your business.
An impactful mission statement is a well-defined roadmap.
It motivates and guides all stakeholders in your company and tells you the path you need to focus on in your life. Without it, it's like having a bunch of headless monkeys (zombie monkeys?) running the company. The mission is your guiding light that illuminates the path. It's the essence of your business, encapsulating its core purpose and direction. Just as an aircraft's navigation system ensures it reaches its intended destination, your mission statement ensures your business stays on course.
Our mission at Skylink is to "ensure seamless, global access to essential nose-to-tail aircraft material, simplifying commercial, regional, and military maintenance operations by merging cutting-edge technology with a human-centric approach."
2/ Conduct a weekly preview to plan your upcoming weeks' top targets.
A weekly preview is a fifteen-minute distraction-free session during which you plan your top five to seven priorities for the week.
These aren't tasks to be done per se, but they are priorities that will meaningfully impact a project or goal.
So instead of a task like "Call X client to discuss Y," your weekly priority could be "Send draft proposal to X client by Thursday morning." The subtasks are then planned for a particular day in the week to help draft the proposal.
Here's how your weekly preview can become purposeful priorities for specific days:
Monday: "Call X client to discuss Y."
Tuesday: "Write a draft of proposal and send a copy to Z for editing."
Wednesday: "Discuss draft with Z and make edits to proposal."
Thursday: "Finalize draft proposal and send to client."
Again, this is how you'll break down each weekly priority into purposeful daily actions.
3/ You can only have an open task list of 10.
In the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman gives a great tip.
Your task list should only have ten open tasks at once. Once you feed tasks from the open to the closed list, you can then add tasks to the open list. "The rule is that you can't add a new task until one is completed." This forces you to actively choose what tasks deserve your finite attention.
Focus on priorities, not productivity.
Now it's time to set your daily purposeful priorities.
Step 1: Review your week.
Review your weekly priorities for fifteen minutes at the end of each day.
What have you completed? What still needs your attention? Go through and update statuses, cross off priorities, and establish a benchmark of where you're at and what still needs to be done for the week.
Think of this quick review as a temperature check for how you're winning the week.
Step 2: Preview your day.
Next, review all your upcoming tasks for the next day.
This part can be overwhelming if you're like me and blindly add tasks to your task list, but now it's time to purge. As you review the list, you'll decide to delete, defer, or delegate some tasks. If it's something quick, take action. If you want to delete it, delete it right now—do not hesitate. If you're delegating, delegate the task to the right person immediately.
You get the point.
The goal is to set a clear focus for tomorrow, eliminate noise, and focus on the few things that matter most.
Step 3: Consciously choose 3 priorities for the day.
Last, you'll prioritize three tasks for the coming day.
"OMG, Nate, only three?" Yes, you'll focus on 'only' three purposeful priorities for the day. Even if you finish two, you should still consider it a well-executed day. A purposeful priority isn't some BS task like cleaning the cat litter. They're important. Meaningful. They ensure you're pushing your weekly and quarterly goals forward significantly.
During your day, other tasks will pop up, you'll get unexpected calls, or chaos will ensue between two co-workers. Expect that. And some, you'll need to divert your attention to. But most unplanned tasks are distractions that take your attention away from the few things (your daily three!) that matter the most.
The purpose of your day revolves around these three priorities.
You must prioritize getting these done above all else. If you use a task manager, these three priorities will be at the top of the list. If you're like me, I move these tasks onto a notecard so I don't get too distracted by technology.
If you focus on everything, you focus on nothing, so you might as well focus on the few things that matter the most.
Print that and hang it somewhere.
It's now your daily mantra.
