98.2% of People Have Trouble Doing This

Hi there,

That’s a key priority for us.

We are moving quickly and prioritizing as we go.

… Are you really though?

Are you really prioritizing?

Or are you just talking about it?

🐙 P.S. Make our day! Share a testimonial about Remote Octopus here.

⚡ Supercharge of the Week

Remote Octopus recommends walking the walk when it comes to project prioritization.

Many companies anchor their core values and messaging in prioritization (See: Ruthless prioritization at Meta). And startups move at warp speed to meet constantly shifting company and customer needs – making prioritization a key determination of success.

❝

"The question I ask myself like almost every day is, 'Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?' ... Unless I feel like I'm working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I'm not going to feel good about how I'm spending my time.”

– Mark Zuckerberg

… But so many leaders claim to be prioritizing projects when they’re not actually engaging in prioritization. They’re not walking the walk. They’re picking what they want to do & just calling those priorities. They’re essentially saying: It’s a priority because I said so.

Why is this a problem?

It’s confusing to your project teams.
It undermines your reliability and negatively impacts psychological safety.
It impacts the ability of your startup to find PMF and scale.

But then why does it happen?

98.2% of people have trouble prioritizing tasks!

It’s easy to talk the talk about the importance of prioritization… but it’s much more challenging to actually put prioritization in place for your team. Prioritization is hard because it often means saying no, reallocating time and resources, or pivoting.

As a project leader, take a few minutes to reflect:

How am I prioritizing our current projects and tasks? What data am I leveraging to drive those decisions?
How do the company mission, vision, and core values impact my prioritization?
How am I measuring the impact of this prioritization?
What is a recent example where I put prioritization in action? A second example? What have I learned so far about prioritization?
How am I clearly communicating the details, data, and rationale of prioritization with the team and how it impacts their responsibilities?