Prioritization as a Superpower(nbt.substack.com)
nbt.substack.com
Prioritization as a Superpower
https://nbt.substack.com/p/prioritization-as-a-superpower
12 comments
Maybe you should write a blog post. I misread your name to be “nerd herd” as in a verb, herding nerds.
Can you elaborate on applying 80/20 rule in projects. Do you focus on 20% of the most important deliverables? 20% of timeline (focus on bottlenecks)?
Can you elaborate on applying 80/20 rule in projects. Do you focus on 20% of the most important deliverables? 20% of timeline (focus on bottlenecks)?
Here's one!
https://jondouglas.dev/the-pareto-pm/
https://jondouglas.dev/the-pareto-pm/
Thanks! This is the post I wish I'd read instead of TFA ;)
If you start every day with 'what's our priority for today' - that indicates a lack of planning, a word not mentioned in this article. Running around like a chicken sans head is another way to describe this kind of leadership. Now if you have a 'priority meeting' once a week (at most, once a month might really be better) in which tasks are decided on and workloads are passed out, then people will be able to concentrate on those tasks. Maybe have a once-a-week sit-down meeting with individuals to monitor progress, offer encouragement, solve problems that might be holding things up, etc.
I sometimes wonder if smartphone culture is at least partially to blame for a tendency towards an inability to plan things in advance. Smartphones make it easy for people to constantly change their schedules, make last-minute arrangements, and they also promote the immediate gratification mentality.
I sometimes wonder if smartphone culture is at least partially to blame for a tendency towards an inability to plan things in advance. Smartphones make it easy for people to constantly change their schedules, make last-minute arrangements, and they also promote the immediate gratification mentality.
> If you start every day with 'what's our priority for today' - that indicates a lack of planning
How much experience do you have at very early stage startups? From my personal experience, things are often very chaotic prior to product-market fit. It is wasteful to plan too far in advance because there are so many uncertainties. There are too many teams that spend a whole lot of time feeling productive while scheduling and planning, but in reality they aren't actually getting s** done. Not saying this is always the case - it depends on the product/industry/tech, but getting things done without a clear plan is a very advantageous trait for early stage founders.
How much experience do you have at very early stage startups? From my personal experience, things are often very chaotic prior to product-market fit. It is wasteful to plan too far in advance because there are so many uncertainties. There are too many teams that spend a whole lot of time feeling productive while scheduling and planning, but in reality they aren't actually getting s** done. Not saying this is always the case - it depends on the product/industry/tech, but getting things done without a clear plan is a very advantageous trait for early stage founders.
> Now if you have a 'priority meeting' once a week (at most, once a month might really be better) in which tasks are decided on and workloads are passed out, then people will be able to concentrate on those tasks.
That all sounds nice and good in theory, but I think everyone who has worked at a startup knows how difficult that can be in practice, primarily because you have lots of unexpected issues and challenges come up on a day-to-day basis, and at a startup (as opposed to a large, established company) there is rarely spare capacity to deal with those emergent issues.
Every startup I've ever worked at certainly had weekly or biweekly sprint plannings, and monthly status checks, and quarterly planning. That didn't really make it any easier to solve the constant prioritization struggle of the strategic vs. the day-to-day.
That all sounds nice and good in theory, but I think everyone who has worked at a startup knows how difficult that can be in practice, primarily because you have lots of unexpected issues and challenges come up on a day-to-day basis, and at a startup (as opposed to a large, established company) there is rarely spare capacity to deal with those emergent issues.
Every startup I've ever worked at certainly had weekly or biweekly sprint plannings, and monthly status checks, and quarterly planning. That didn't really make it any easier to solve the constant prioritization struggle of the strategic vs. the day-to-day.
pre market product fit this is a disastrous approach
Starting your day with „what’s your priority today“ is the basis of many engineering orgs these days. Most of the time it’s not a lack of planning but a desire to overplan that leads to these daily introspectives.
A colleague of mine brings the cryptic crossword to work and everyone tries to get at least one. The point is that right next to it is the horoscopes - and they are so obviously just full of nice platitudes that could apply to anyone.
The list of traits needed for a founder are very similar. Flexible - yeah sure that's me. Imaginative? Humble ? tick tick.
What makes a real founder? Dunno. But i doubt it's a priori qualities of that person. I would like to see a BC fund randomly assign money to citizens. See what realmempircal evidence tells us.
The list of traits needed for a founder are very similar. Flexible - yeah sure that's me. Imaginative? Humble ? tick tick.
What makes a real founder? Dunno. But i doubt it's a priori qualities of that person. I would like to see a BC fund randomly assign money to citizens. See what realmempircal evidence tells us.
I agree.
With that out of the way, there's a huge "but".
My personal experience after having worked in a number of different fields, is that many people who consider themselves to be super-prioritizers are basically borderline a***s who "delegate", "know when to say no", and "follow the pareto principle".
When any one of these is used sparingly and in isolation, it can help and make a positive difference. But when all 3 are present at the same time, it's a huge red flag.
It leads to people who readily dump work on others, while systematically refusing to take off other people's load when possible, and half-ass their job, effectively achieving "efficiency" by not doing stuff, secure in the knowledge that someone else will sacrifice their own efficiency to pick up the slack. And all this while feeling good about themselves on how efficient they're being.
And unfortunately, because of silly metrics that tend to favour such people, this creates a vicious cycle, with dysfunctional teams, and inefficiencies becoming externalised all over the place.
With that out of the way, there's a huge "but".
My personal experience after having worked in a number of different fields, is that many people who consider themselves to be super-prioritizers are basically borderline a***s who "delegate", "know when to say no", and "follow the pareto principle".
When any one of these is used sparingly and in isolation, it can help and make a positive difference. But when all 3 are present at the same time, it's a huge red flag.
It leads to people who readily dump work on others, while systematically refusing to take off other people's load when possible, and half-ass their job, effectively achieving "efficiency" by not doing stuff, secure in the knowledge that someone else will sacrifice their own efficiency to pick up the slack. And all this while feeling good about themselves on how efficient they're being.
And unfortunately, because of silly metrics that tend to favour such people, this creates a vicious cycle, with dysfunctional teams, and inefficiencies becoming externalised all over the place.
Last year I launched a perfect tool exactly for prioritization / item selection from any list.
For example, you can choose your most necessary goals using SMART++ criteria (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-phased, Ethical, Environmentally sound, Positively stated, etc.). Or you can prioritize weekly tasks, evaluating them by your criteria of choice (Urgency, Importance, Unavoidability, Manageability, Impact, Ethical, social, and ecological responsibility, Financial return, etc.)
Or the author of the article, as an investor, could get help choosing a founding team for funding, evaluating them by the criteria he mentioned: hungry, humble, knowledgeable, and attractive for talent.
Here is the link: https://www.1st-things-1st.com
For example, you can choose your most necessary goals using SMART++ criteria (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-phased, Ethical, Environmentally sound, Positively stated, etc.). Or you can prioritize weekly tasks, evaluating them by your criteria of choice (Urgency, Importance, Unavoidability, Manageability, Impact, Ethical, social, and ecological responsibility, Financial return, etc.)
Or the author of the article, as an investor, could get help choosing a founding team for funding, evaluating them by the criteria he mentioned: hungry, humble, knowledgeable, and attractive for talent.
Here is the link: https://www.1st-things-1st.com
For more substantial and actionable guidance, I recommend the book "Algorithms to Live By".
Priority used to not be plural, and it meant "the first thing".
If you can get it down to the one thing you need to be doing right now, you'll be good. If you choose the wrong priority, then that's feedback for future priority selection.
Do not choose more than one thing. Just choose more frequently the smaller the tasks you need to complete are. Entry level engineering is usually a few things a day, the more senior it becomes one a day to one a week. Once you're in the executive ranks, it becomes one a month/quarter.
The mistake many people make is thinking they need to pick more than one thing because they have so many simultaneous things occurring. This is an incorrect view of time - you can only do one. Pick one. The world's urgency will interrupt you sufficiently that the rest is largely just task urgency update management.
If you struggle to pick something, I've found alltom's tooling great: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/priorities-in-motion/id1577124...
If you can get it down to the one thing you need to be doing right now, you'll be good. If you choose the wrong priority, then that's feedback for future priority selection.
Do not choose more than one thing. Just choose more frequently the smaller the tasks you need to complete are. Entry level engineering is usually a few things a day, the more senior it becomes one a day to one a week. Once you're in the executive ranks, it becomes one a month/quarter.
The mistake many people make is thinking they need to pick more than one thing because they have so many simultaneous things occurring. This is an incorrect view of time - you can only do one. Pick one. The world's urgency will interrupt you sufficiently that the rest is largely just task urgency update management.
If you struggle to pick something, I've found alltom's tooling great: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/priorities-in-motion/id1577124...
If you work in a team and can delegate tasks, you can have more than one parallel priorities.
even better. if your team can delegate back to you, you have coroutines.
that and a big fat mess.
that and a big fat mess.
Maybe I’m just a grump but this class of article is painful: you’ve got hand-wavy unsubstantiated claims and nothing tactical a reader can take away to make their life better. You can simplify it to a short tweet: “prioritization is really important for founders”. I’m coming to dislike this kind of content-less content - it’s a waste of time to produce and consume.
You fell for the ".substack.com' branding. Initially that used to be some kind of quality signifier when they were first posted to HN; a writer's oasis free from the editorial yoke of big media and the cruft of online advertising.
Now it's mostly Medium.com all over again.
Now it's mostly Medium.com all over again.
It's better because Medium optimizes for clicks while substack optimizes for subscribers.
What does that mean in practice? I didn't subscribe to read this link and neither did you. So optimizing for subscribers didn't prevent a low quality article from slipping through.
Which means, given time, Substack will go the way of Medium. There is no cost to publishing, and Substack doesn't have a way to kick spammers, influencers and lowest-common denominator content out.
Which means, given time, Substack will go the way of Medium. There is no cost to publishing, and Substack doesn't have a way to kick spammers, influencers and lowest-common denominator content out.
Thank you for pointing this out; I am definitely falling for the branding. Now that I realize it I’ll be more discriminating in what I read from substack.
Thanks again!
Thanks again!
I agree. This article reminds me of the vacuous advice given to new investors: "buy low and sell high" :-)
I'm also a grump and I know it's useless when the word "superpower" is in the title. I'm just allergic to that word and anyone who uses it immediately loses credibility.
Hmm, I found it uplifting. I'm not in the startup space, but I feel like I have been struggling with prioritization, without really understanding what I was struggling with. In my case, the constant tugging from one operational crisis to another has made it difficult to focus on long-term goals, and I need to learn to let others fight their own fires from time to time so I can prioritize tasks I know will have an out-sized effect later. Guess it's just a matter of perspective!
good thing you brought that up. I have not read the article, so not sure if I like it. However, a lot people read articles not for thee information, rather style or flavour. I guess this is one those for you. Most stuff online don't really have anything new to say, it is also mostly PR or marketing sometimes.
Yeah, you're quite right; nothing new was said here. But, I think there is sometimes value in saying things again, or differently.
>I’m coming to dislike this kind of content-less content - it’s a waste of time to produce and consume.
Ah just skim the article. The first time says that he is a VC. I think one ought to expect that much from VCs. As you can see emy expectations for VC is not very hight.
Ah just skim the article. The first time says that he is a VC. I think one ought to expect that much from VCs. As you can see emy expectations for VC is not very hight.
Managing teams of software developers, my #1 task was to make sure the team stayed on track, instead of drifting off working on lower priority tasks. Making sure you always work on what is most important is a surprisingly rare skill.
This is a very good point. Prioritization is a hugely underestimated skill. This article just made me realize I do not put enough effort into prioritizing things in my work.
This reminds me about the idea of staying focused that Steve Jobs was very fond of. There is an interesting video of Jony Ive sharing the lessons he learned from Steve showing how powerful and subtle the point of prioritization can be.
If this article came from a founder on their experiences with prioritization, I think it would feel more genuine and insightful of what you might be able to take away from it.
I work as a big tech PM and prioritization is my job. I've explored hundreds of ways to do it. Found some good ones, found some bad ones. What I can say is that experience is the only way you become accustomed to the characteristics the author is mentioning with regards to people who are good at prioritization.
The most effective tool I've found? The 80/20 rule or known as Pareto's Principle. That has applied to every single project, program, and initiative I've been apart of to large degrees of success. It's the most flexible and can apply everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
Another interesting one depending where you work is the 1% rule. This helps you demonstrate whether certain things benefit everyone, or just a small but loud few.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule