Systemize Saturday #1: 4 Strategies to Prioritize Growth-Driving Tasks for Busy Founders
Challenge
Yesterday, I asked a founder what her main productivity challenge was.
Here’s how the conversation went.
Question: What’s your main productivity challenge?
I don’t know how to prioritize. How do I determine which task/initiative is high impact?
I usually end up doing urgent things instead of the important ones.
Question: How do you usually prioritize?
The day before, I look at my tasks, and select the one I feel is the most important. I then tackle it first thing in the next morning.
But, as I’m now thinking, I usually select a task/initiative based on the deadlines for my clients. So, again, it’s rather the urgent—not the important—that I do.
Question: Do you have goals?
For my clients yes—deliverables.
For my business just a general revenue goal. No key results, specific outputs, deliverables, etc.
This is a very common problem among the founders I work with.
Their schedule is dominated by urgent work—answering messages, putting out fires, meetings, petty tasks, multi-tasking, etc—leaving no or little space for what’s truly important, for high-impact work that truly grows their business.
If you struggle with this as well, don’t worry—I’ve got you covered.
I’ve solved this problem repeatedly with the entrepreneurs I work with 1-1.
Today, I’ll show you four frameworks I would implement to prioritize their (and their team’s) work, in turn leading to greater and faster growth.
Solution Ideas
This problem has at least three main causes:
Poor strategy definition
Low work efficiency
Low proactiveness
We’ll eliminate each one of these problems by implementing 4 proven systems that I’ve seen work every single time with my clients:
Strategy Mapping to focus your (and your teams’) energy on what matters, effectively
Blocking Rocks to GRAB time for what’s important before you drown in the urgent work.
Streamlining Execution to focus on high-impact work—and eliminate, automate, and delegate the rest
Weekly Reviews to plan for impact and prevent fires from happening in the first place
Note: This is quite a long essay. If you don’t have the time or are just looking for quick insights and solutions, scroll down to the “Blitz Solutions” section.
#1 Strategy Mapping
Goal: Focus your (and your teams’) energy on what matters, effectively
"Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination." — Fitzhugh Dodson
Let’s say you’re driving in your car and you’re approaching a crossing.
If you don’t know where you’re going (what your destination is), it’s impossible to decide whether to turn right, left, or go straight.
That’s why, before you enter your car, you need to define where you want to go.
Further, if you want to reach your destination effectively, not only do you need to know specifically where you want to go, but you need to know how you’re going to get there (i.e., map/plan).
The same is true in business.
You need specific goals and plans for reaching them.
When this is clear, prioritization is easy.
Why?
Because whenever you examine your list of tasks, you can ask yourself “Which of these tasks is most likely to move me closer to my most important goal?”
Or, when you plan your work, you can determine the most important task by asking yourself “What’s the next action to move me closer to my most important goal.”
Makes sense?
But, if you’re serious about making real progress consistently, goals are too general.
You need something more specific.
You need a strategy.
How to map your strategy?
I do it using areas, outcomes, outputs, and inputs.
Area(s): key sphere of activity with a standard to be maintained over time (ex. Marketing)
Outcome(s): timely and measurable goal to move a given area forward (ex. Increase website CVR by 10% EO Q1 2024)
Output(s): tangible deliverable or result to achieve a given outcome (ex. Conduct 1 CVR experiment per week)
Input(s): unit of work to generate a given output (ex. research benchmarks, create experiment hypothesis, create designs, etc.)
Mapping your business this way will provide you with complete clarity on what you and your team want to achieve and how to get there.
This is what one of my client’s said after we mapped her strategy:
Being able to see the processes from A to Z will help us grow exponentially because we have total clarity on what we want and how to get there, and everyone knows exactly what they have to, and can see where we’re going in real time. —Torri, Founder & CEO @ G1 Constructions
Here’s an example of strategy mapping of a client—another agency owner:
And here, how it looks organized in a Notion workspace
You can learn more about how to map your strategy in this video:
🫵 Your turn: Map your strategy.
List out all areas in life and business
Define outcomes for each area (I recommend 1 quarterly & 1 yearly)
Define outputs for each outcome
Define inputs for each output
#2 Block Your Rocks
Goal: GRAB time for what’s important before you drown in the urgent work.
“Nothing is worth more that today” — Goethe
How many times have you looked back on your day only to realize that you haven’t done anything impactful?
Instead, you wasted your time on petty tasks, constant messaging, and useless meetings.
Been there, done that. And after working directly with +20 clients, I realized one thing:
If you don’t GRAB time for what’s important (high-impact work), it will ALWAYS be replaced with what’s urgent.
Like this:
Why does it happen and what can you do about it?
Think of your daily work capacity as an empty jar.
Your priorities are the rocks, while other people's priorities are the sand.
Without a planned work schedule, the sand—other people's priorities—will fill your jar, leaving no room for your rocks.
As a result, you may find yourself prioritizing other people's needs over your own.
However, a proactive approach of placing your rocks first allows you to execute your priorities while still accommodating others' needs.
In practice, this involves defining 2-3 high-impact tasks/activities (your rocks) and blocking out time for them in your calendar.
This is what one of my clients said after we mapped their rocks:
“Getting the high-value work done first as opposed to getting lost in the low-value paper-work tasks allowed me to make unprecedented progress on my business without ever being busy.”
How to identify your rocks?
This is how Dan Kennedy does it:
Identify and write down the three most important, most significant, most productive, and most valuable things you can do to foster success in your particular enterprise—just three. Write them down. From there, translate them into three actions you can take each and every day. Write them down.
For me, this means setting aside three 90-minute blocks for my most important activities:
Content creation
Business-related tasks
Client work
No one can schedule meetings in those time blocks. I don’t reply to messages or fool around during this time. The only thing I do is work deeply on my 3 rocks. That’s it.
Look at your outcomes and outputs (previous step) and ask yourself Dan Kennedy’s question.
Select up to 3 rocks, block them in your calendar, and protect this time ruthlessly.
It’s literally the most important time for your business.
I repeat, protect it at ALL costs.
(Btw., you don’t have to start hardcore like me. You can start by defining just one rock and designate 1 hour to it. Then, keep adding remaining rocks and extending the time incrementally.)
🫵 Your turn: Block up to 3 rocks in your calendar (you can start with one), and execute them every single day
#3 Streamline Execution
Goal: Focus on high-impact work—eliminate, automate, delegate the rest
“Never automate something that can be eliminated. Never delegate something that can be automated.” — Tim Ferriss
I can hear you saying “Simon, I get that I must focus on high-impact work, but who will take care of all of the other tasks, who will be putting out the fires, etc?“
The low-impact and urgent work will be done—just not in the way that you’re used to.
We’ll use the EAD framework to eliminate, automate, and delegate your remaining tasks.
Here’s the entire EAD process
Make note of all of the tasks you worked on over the last 4-8 weeks (use your calendar and “Completed” view in Tasks)
Determine the Outcome/Output it connects to
Indicate whether a task gives you energy or drains your energy
Assign an approximate monetary value to a task
Mark whether you can eliminate, automate, delegate
Streamline!
An example:
Based on this example, I removed 9 out of 10 tasks. That’s hundreds of hours saved per year.
As you can see, you can outsource a LOT of work, if you want.
Now it’s your turn.
When you complete your analysis, schedule the streamlining tasks and execute them.
#4 Weekly Review
Goal: Plan for impact and prevent fires from happening in the first place
For a founder who leads a team and serves multiple clients and/or thousands of customers, work never stops flowing in.
You likely have an endless list of tasks, and dozens of unread messages from your team and clients, and your calendar might be filled with meetings.
No matter how much you work, there is always something to do.
Because you’re in constant execution mode, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds with your head down, and lose track of the big picture—of what’s important.
(Note: if you implemented the previous 3 systems, this would be a lesser problem.)
If you want to succeed as a founder, you must focus both on the trees (quality delivery, communication, etc.) AND on the forest (strategic, impactful work).
That’s why you need to implement the Weekly Review.
Why?
The Weekly Review introduces two powerful practices: regular reflection & planning.
Reflection allows you to avoid becoming someone Einstein called insane:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
It helps you catch yourself before you go off track and eliminate problems before they get too serious.
Planning makes you proactive—which is one of the key traits of successful people.
It helps you to stay focused on your priorities—your Outcomes and Outputs—compelling you to create and follow a concrete action plan for moving closer to your goals.
This ensures the important things get done before the urgent things—other people’s wants and the waves of business—consume your schedule.
In short, the Weekly Review helps you prioritize the high-impact work.
How to do the Weekly Review
Step #1: What were my intended vs. actual results?
Open a project or goal and review what you intended to achieve last week versus what you actually have achieved.
Have you completed all planned tasks (like publishing the article)?
Have you generated the intended results (like sending a target number of DMs)?
If you fell short, ask yourself why. What could you have done differently to deliver on what you planned?
Step #2: What are the “next actions” to achieve (or exceed) my intended results on time?
“A project is sufficiently planned when every next-action step has been decided on every front that can actually be moved on without some other component to be completed first*.”* —David Allen
No matter how big and scary the project, there’s always at least 1 thing you can do to move it forward, even just a little bit.
For instance, to make sure you don’t fall short of your 2-newsletters-per-week goal, you could schedule an additional 30-min of writing per day.
Assess each component of the project and ask yourself: “What’s the next action to move this goal/project closer to completion?”
Create relevant tasks, resources, & meetings (add the due dates).
In general, I recommend planning no more than 3-5 tasks per goal/project per week (especially if you have many active initiatives).
Don’t overthink it. You’ll get a better intuition about your work capacity—how much work to schedule—with each weekly review (if you stick to it).
Trust the process.
Repeat those two steps for every active goal/project.
This practice will ensure you’ll be doing the high-impact work consistently.
Blitz Solutions
1. Strategy Mapping
What: A method to set specific goals and plans for your business.
Why: It provides clarity on what you want to achieve and how to get there, making prioritization easy.
How: Define key areas in your business, set outcomes for each area—and then, define ONE action you can do daily to move toward that outcome.
2. Blocking Rocks
What: A practice of reserving specific time blocks for your most important tasks.
Why: It ensures that high-impact work gets done before you get drowned in urgent tasks.
How: Identify 2-3 high-impact tasks, and schedule them in your calendar. Protect this time at all costs.
3. Streamlining Execution
What: A process of eliminating, automating, and delegating tasks.
Why: It allows you to focus on high-impact work and offload the rest.
How: List all tasks you've been doing, assign a value to each, and decide whether you can eliminate, automate, or delegate them.
4. Weekly Review
What: A habit of regular reflection and planning.
Why: It helps you stay focused on your priorities and make consistent progress towards your goals.
How: At the end of each week, review your intended vs. actual results and determine the "next actions" for each of your projects.
Summary & Next Steps
Above, I’ve shown you a few things I would do to prioritize your work to focus on high-impact that actually grows your business.
I hope this was helpful.
Now it’s time to IMPLEMENT.
You can do it yourself, OR I can help you with that (and much more).
If you want me to implement my optimization systems FOR YOU to free up 10-20 hours per week to focus on growth AND eliminate any stress, overwhelm, & busyness that comes with running a business, you can book a call here.
I’ll only be taking on 2 more clients. So if you’re interested, ACT quickly.
Thanks for reading and see you neet week!
Simon