How to choose what to do

15 Jan 2021

There is an infinity of things you could possibly be doing at any given moment. Every idea can be low or high value, over a short or long term. So how do you choose?

Realized today that the right thing to choose is that which advances a pre-decided active goal, & not something blue sky.

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Picking anything blue sky (unrelated to an active goal) will be attractive, but reduces the chances of finishing that goal, leading to waste of the effort already sunk into that goal.

Most importantly, you will lose the benefits of having achieved that goal compounded over time.

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How do you deal with awesome new ideas with big upsides, then?

Well, if you have space for a new goal, then make one and assign it to that.

What if you’re already spread thin?

Then you shelve it and work hard to finish an active goal. Make space for it before launching into it.

Also realized that this applies as well to personal hacking as it does to managing your team’s project slate ¯_(ツ)_/¯