Serguey Asael Shinder – IT Professional

I once wrote down five priorities for a week and labeled all of them “top.” I remember feeling organized doing it, even a little proud — look at all the important things I was on top of. By Friday I had made real progress on none of them, and I couldn’t understand why, because I had worked hard the entire week.

The answer, which took me a while to accept, was hiding in the word itself. “Priority” was singular for most of its history. There was the priority — the first thing, the one that came before the others. It was only recently that we started pretending you could have several of them at once, and the pretending had quietly broken my week.

Five top priorities aren’t five priorities. They’re five things competing for the same finite hours, and when you refuse to rank them, you don’t get to five outcomes — you get whatever the loudest or most urgent one drags you toward, moment by moment. I hadn’t chosen anything. I’d just handed the choosing to whichever fire was burning hottest at any given time, and called the chaos “staying flexible.”

Real prioritizing, I learned, is supposed to hurt a little. It means saying this one is first, and these others wait, and accepting that waiting has a genuine cost. The discomfort is the sign you’re actually doing it. When everything is marked important, nothing is ranked, and an unranked list isn’t a plan — it’s a wish, sorted by panic.

The week I finally tried the opposite, it felt almost too simple. One thing first. Do it well enough to be done with it. Then the next. Fewer things carried at once, each of them actually finished, and — strangely — a calmer week that produced more than the frantic one had.

I still catch myself wanting to call five things “top.” It always feels responsible in the moment. It never is. The honest, uncomfortable act of choosing one is the whole job.

– Serguey Asael Shinder