How To Discern The Essential
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🕓 4 Minute Read
TL;DR
There are countless priorities vying for your attention each day. Whether you own your own business or work on a team, you need to start developing a system for discerning what tasks and projects deserve your deepest focus and highest priority. Professional discernment is a mission-critical skill to be honed — start today!
As business owners and entrepreneurs, we've all been there.
You have high hopes for the day, your most critical tasks are planned out, and you’re emanating all the intention you think you need to have a productive stretch of work.
And then that email notification catches your eye.
And then that unplanned phone call vibrates your the desk.
And then Twitter.
And then Instagram.
(For you youngin’s, TikTok may even be hitting different that day.)
And then lunch, bathroom breaks, caffeine withdrawals, and every other unforeseen distraction under the sun — all teaming up to destroy your concentration and rob you of the precious, limited supply of deep focus you wake up with each morning.
This all undoubtedly sounds familiar.
But what about the distractions that we knowingly choose?
*mic drop*
Here's an uncomfortable truth about the way we typically approach our task lists:
We'd often rather reach for the 'lowest-hanging' task on our list to feel like we've accomplished something of worth early on in our day.
The dopamine rush of marking a simple task 'complete' tricks our brains into thinking that we're being productive when in fact, the more energy we devote to those secondary, non-mission-critical tasks, the less likely we are able to address our primary task with full clarity and efficiency.
I call this the last-task-standing fallacy.
It's the belief that, 'If I can completely clear my to-do list of all low-hanging items, I'll leave the one essential task as my final focus for the day with no distractions.'
What ends up disproving this belief is that by the time we clear our list, our 'decision-tank' is almost always empty of fuel.
In his 2016 book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Georgetown University Professor and critically acclaimed Author, Cal Newport, says that it’s this bouncing around from task to task, or multitasking, that deteriorates the part of your brain that allows you to focus.
More frighteningly, the more you multitask, the less comfortable you’ll be “going deep for extended periods of time,” he writes.
“Discerning the essential from the non-essential is arguably the most important super power a CEO (or any productive worker for that matter) can possess, and consequently the hardest to develop.”
So what can we do to combat the threat that multitasking presents, not only to our productivity, but to our brain health?
The answer is not magical.
Start caring enough about your productivity that you measurably prioritize what's essential each day through a combination of practical techniques and tools.
At Brave U, we’re extremely passionate about helping creatives unlock better work through better process. Discerning the essential from the non-essentials tasks and projects in your week is a prime opportunity to implement better process. Fortunately for you, we’ve got you covered.
Here’s how:
1. Implement our free Personal Productivity Board
Inspired by the popular GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology, this personal productivity board is a task management system designed to help you capture, clarify, organize, and execute your ideas on a daily basis. For the serial entrepreneurs, manage tasks across multiple ventures all in one place.
2. Implement Calendar Blocking (Shallow & Deep Blocks)
Calendar blocking is a very simple practice of using blocks of time or specific events to map out all of your tasks or routines for both work and personal use. Much like zero-based budgeting, you're planning out every hour of your day (whether with specific tasks or open-ended themes) to fully coordinate your time management. Bonus: use color codes for different types of blocks (i.e. light blue = shallow work, coral = meeting, green = personal time, dark blue = deep work)
3. Implement our free Task & Project Prioritizer
Professional discernment toward small and large decisions is a mission-critical skill to be honed — now there’s a practical resource to continue developing this superpower. Leverage this quick system to help you identify, grade, and prioritize essential tasks or projects from the non-essential.
In Summary
If you take nothing else from this article, take this fundamental reminder: your time is invaluable and you’ll never get it back after you’ve spent it. So why not spend it like you (hopefully) spend your money - from a well-planned budget.
Surprises will inevitably come and no productivity system on earth is without fault or nuance but the big idea here is to teach you how to value your time and decision-making power as though your next big career or business move depends on it.
Because it does.
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