Why your priorities are holding you back

Video Transcript

Did you know that the word priority did not have a plural until the 1900s? But the word priority has existed in the English language since the 1400s. For 500 years, humans understood that we could only have a single priority. And then in the 1900s, we decided that you could have more than one priority.

I want to tell you why that is the thing that is killing the progress of your business. So, I've said for years that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. If everything is urgent, then nothing is urgent. And as somebody who likes to grow, start and grow businesses, this is the number one thing that gets in a lot of people's way when they've started building their business.

On my program, No Bullship, I ruthlessly focus people. That is the thing that makes people ship is ruthless focus. And if you have the plural of the word priority, priorities, then what is it that you're focusing on? If you have one hour a week to build your side business and turn your idea into that, then how can you have multiple priorities?

Because it takes at least 15 20 minutes to get into the work that you're doing this week. And if you're focusing on three or four things, it's going to take you multiple 15 minute stints to get deep into the work. And then once you're focused on the one important thing in the back of your mind, you understand that there are three or four other important things that you should be working on. So the thing you're doing isn't the thing you focus on.

If you want to take your idea and turn it into a real side business, you don't need multiple priorities. You need better planning. What I call foundation mode. You need a better foundation to work off of.

I push people to constantly repprioritize and focus on one thing at a time. It's a little bit redundant to have the plural of the word priority in your backlog of things that you're trying to build when you are taking your idea and turning it into a business. One thing at a time, one priority at a time. Who is your primary user?

Not your priority of users. What is the critical path that you're going on? Not the multiple critical paths that you could go on. Early on in a business, everything is about editing down your priorities so that you're focusing on one core thing at a time.

If you don't know what the most important thing that you should be doing is right now, then you probably haven't taken the time to sit and think about it. You probably don't have a good idea of what you're building, why you're building it, who you're building it for, and when you want to start building it. So, take a breath. AI tools make it easy for you to just go out and build stuff.

And building without a plan, building without knowing what your priorities are, means that you're just building in the dark. And then you're going to have to piece together all these broken bits and pieces once you've figured out what your priority is because it might not have been the thing you started building at the beginning. So remember, one priority at a time. Multiple priorities means if you're prioritizing everything, then nothing is important.