Deprioritization is the real key to productivity
Making one thing a priority means putting something else off — and that’s ok
A weekly list of deprioritized projects
We’ve been thinking a lot about priorities at Zapier this year. Everyone herewrites a weekly Friday update, which until recently was more-or-less a weekly list of completed tasks.
However, that approach lacked focus, so we changed things up: now everyone outlines what their top priority was in the past week and what their top priority will be in the week to come. This exercise forces us to think about which project is most important and commit to making progress on it.
But, like I said, there’s a flip side to deciding on a priority, and that’s deciding what’s not a priority. Michael Shen, Director of Advertising and Paid Media here at Zapier, decided to make this explicit every week. In a recent Friday update, he wrote:
And so he has, using his weekly update to catalog not only the things he prioritized, but also the things he intentionally didn’t prioritize.
“Deprioritization is normal, but we don’t yet do a great job of it at Zapier,” Michael told me, adding that making this change has given him both clarity and balance. “Since making this change, my work-life balance has been so good that I feel pretty guilty about it.”
He shouldn’t feel bad — he set a priority and stuck to it. For Steph Donily, Head of Content and Communications at Zapier, publicly admitting to deprioritizing projects is, in part, about setting a good example when it comes to work-life balance.
“It’s not comfortable admitting that I can’t do everything myself,” said Steph. “But I have to deprioritize projects because I want to make it clear that it’s ok for my team to do the same thing.”
It’s important to note that deprioritizing something doesn’t mean not doing it — it means not doing itnow. Both Steph and Michael are explicit about this in their updates, stating that these are projects they will get to eventually. They just weren’t the most important thing to invest time in at the moment.
Decide how you will, and won’t, invest your time
You only have so many hours in a week, so make sure you’re using them for the things that matter most right now. Pickone priority every weekand stick to it.
You might be able to finish five projects next week. That doesn’t mean all five projects are your top priority. Prioritization is about figuring out which things you will invest your time in, in the short term. Deprioritization is about figuring out which things you need to put off until later.
Prioritizing one project means deprioritizing something else. That’s just how it is. You can ignore this reality, or you can be intentional about addressing it.
This article by Justin Pot was originally published on theZapier blogand is republished here with permission. You can read the original articlehere.
Story byJustin Pot
Justin Pot is a staff writer at Zapier who previously wrote for How-to Geek, Digital Trends, and TNW. He loves technology, people, and natur(show all)Justin Pot is a staff writer at Zapier who previously wrote for How-to Geek, Digital Trends, and TNW. He loves technology, people, and nature, not necessarily in that order. You can follow Justin:@jhpot. You don’t have to. But you can.
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