# Introduction
Hey, Rusty Gaillard here, and we are talking today about prioritization. Almost every executive that I know, or every senior leader that I know struggles with prioritization. Why? Because we live in a very fast paced business environment. There is so much going on, most people's calendar is back to back, oftentimes with 30 minute hour meetings stacked on top of each other very little time.

# The Three Channels of Work
And what does that mean? It means you've got to manage that kind of meeting schedule on top of work deliverables that you have and all of the communication that you've got, so email, Slack messages, text messages, all the different things that you have coming in. And it's those three channels of work, the meetings, the work product itself, and the communication you're doing that becomes quickly overwhelming because you're trying to do it all at the same time.

# The Challenge of Multitasking
I know I experienced this when I was working at Apple for many years, and I see it time and time again in my clients. It's this multitasking mentality. Look, I'm in one meeting, and I'm trying to respond to messages while I'm in the meeting. I see that all the time, happens frequently, and then it's the five minutes, or the 10 minutes in between, where you're trying to grab a couple minutes to knock out an email take care of a quick work deliverable that you've got, but you're looking for little windows to try to get things done, and the answer to so many people feels like prioritization. If I were better at prioritizing or managing my time, then I wouldn't be in this kind of situation.

#Executive Presence and Delegation
Now there's a couple of related challenges that are tied to this issue of managing your time or owning your time and prioritization, and one of those is delegation. I was inspired years and years ago when I first read the four hour work week by Tim Ferriss with this idea of saying, Wow, how do I shrink the amount of time that I'm investing in my work personally? And one of the answers to that is to better leverage your team. Now, of course, if you're going to do if you're going to do if you're going to delegate effectively, that means you have to be good at managing a high standard and accountability. So there's a bunch of skills that go with that. We're not going to cover that in today's session. But I just want to acknowledge that delegation is one related concept.

# Tim Cook's Model of Executive Presence
And there's another related concept or challenge that a lot of people face, which is this idea of executive presence. I mean, think about your model of executive presence. When you think about someone who really owns executive presence, are they frantic? Are they scrambling? Are they trying to knock off emails while they're in the midst of a meeting and they're not paying attention? Are they multitasking in that way? No, like the model that I have for executive presence, for example, is for all those years I was in meetings with Tim Cook the seat, now, the CEO of Apple, at that point, he was the COO but he would come in, and when he sat down, it was all business, and he was engaged in every part of that meeting. And when he was done, he got up and left. There was no multitasking. There was no any of that going on. And trust me, the rest of us were not multitasking either. We were paying attention. We were engaged in that meeting. And that, to me, is a simple model of executive presence, one that I witnessed in my career, because that executive is focused on the matter at hand. So think about how that relates to prioritization and owning your calendar.

# How Prioritization Impacts Executive Presence
So when you are that in that mode of just trying to get everything done in these three domains, attending to the meetings, delivering on the work, and managing the communication, and you're trying to do those all the same time, how is that undermining your executive presence? Once again, we can dig into executive presence. We're not going to cover that today, but I want to just highlight the fact that this idea of managing your time, owning your calendar, driving prioritization, is very connected to do you have strong executive presence, and are you leveraging your team? Are you delegating and holding them accountable to the kind of high quality results that you need? Those things are all connected. But the challenge is real. And the challenge is we see this day in and day out of all of the work that you've got to manage.

# The Coffee Break Solution
Now, there's a couple of things that I can share with you around prioritization, but really the most fundamental thing is this, what is to step back from all of the work that you're doing gain some perspective. And what I like to actually describe is the simplest way to talk about this is to take a coffee break like coffee is your number one best prioritization tool. Why not? Because it helps you work faster, helps you focus, or any of that, but because coffee implies stepping away from the work for a moment and reflecting and thinking about what makes the most difference.

# The Apple Story: A Personal Example
In one of the jobs that I had at Apple, I had a job responsibility, which is one of these core processes of the business that everybody expects to run, and everybody expects to be right. So there was very little upside in this business, because everyone's expectation is already high. They expect it to be done on time and correctly every time. Do. Right? And like any business process, there were issues periodically, some under our control, some not under our control. But there was plenty of downside in this business process, because when things did not go well, that's when all the attention came and everybody was focused on it. So for a while I had this goal. I want to improve this process. I want to get to 100% reliability. I want to get to the point where we no longer have those downside moments where things don't go well and everybody's focused on us and saying, what's the breakdown? What's the problem? At some point it dawned on me, it doesn't matter how good I get this process, it's never going to be the kind of thing that I get recognized for across the company that's going to boost my career, because Rusty is really driving this process incredibly well. Because, frankly, the expectation was that the process dry is run well, so it was never an opportunity to stand out and be excellent.

# What Got You Here Won't Get You There
Now many of us high achievers, ambitious, smart people, who have done very well in the corporate environment. Have done well by delivering great work, by meeting people's expectations, or exceeding people's expectations, by understanding what others are asking for and delivering it on time and with a high degree of quality. Now I challenge you to think for a moment. Is that the kind of thing that's going to set you apart now early in your career. Yes, it is, because not everybody operates that way, but as you progress and as you go up the ladder, at some point you reach this level where it is expected that you deliver on the work. So this thing that has been differentiator for you for your whole career up until this point no longer is what got you here is not going to get you there. This is a simple example of the fact that is true in many, many places, that your habits and patterns of work that have been so crucial for your success up to this point, you need to change those habits and patterns in order to get to the next level. This whole idea is why I call this podcast this series do something different, because what you've done up into this point may have worked, but it's not going to get you to the next level.

# The Importance of Stepping Back
So when it comes to prioritization, perhaps your answer is no longer I need to respond to all the things that are coming at me. The purpose of the coffee break is to step back and reflect and think about what is really going to make a difference. What is the work that you can do that's going to help you advance in your career, but specifically is going to help your team be more successful and help the company be more successful. If you're not thinking at that level and creating time in your calendar, owning your calendar so that you are in control of it and get to allocate time to these important issues that are going to drive the company, your team and your own success. If you're not doing that proactively, then you're just reacting to all the things that are coming at you, meeting, invitations, work requests, communication. We all get huge amounts of, you know, hundreds of slack and email messages every day. And if you're only responding to those things, you may be responding great. You may be delivering excellent quality work. You may be one of the smartest people in the room, but you're responding. And because you're responding, you're only on the receiving end. You're reacting rather than your driving change and driving initiatives and driving projects.

# The Big Rocks Analogy
This whole idea of prioritization, I actually think you can throw it out the window, because you're not trying to prioritize all the stuff coming at you. That's not the goal. What you're trying to do is take a step back, go for a coffee somewhere, get some perspective and think about what is going to really help advance the business, your team and your own personal success in your domain. What are the things that you can do that it's going to drive success, to make a difference, to make an impact. And then you own your calendar. You take responsibility for creating time on your calendar to allocate to those initiatives so that you can move them forward. And if you do that now, you are in control of your calendar. You're in control of creating time, making time to do the things that matter now, all the rest of the stuff, it's still going to be there. It's still going to be there, but it's secondary, because it's not as important as those key projects that really matter. This is classic Stephen Covey. If you've ever seen the the or I'm sure you've heard of Stephen Covey and the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and this idea of putting the big rocks in first. And if you look at the visual, if you actually go on YouTube and just Google put the big rocks in first, you'll find you can find a video of Stephen Covey demonstrating this, and it's a really simple example, because he's got this jar and he's got rocks and he's got pebbles and he's got sand, and most of us fill the jar with the sand. That's all the slacks and the emails and the meeting and the work requests that are coming in all the time, and it's all this little stuff. And some of them are bigger. Some of them are pebbles, and you put those in too. And then once you go to try to put these big rocks in these important initiatives, they don't fit in the jar. But if you start with the big rocks, which is owning your schedule and putting in those important things that really make a difference, you put those things in first, then you put the pebbles in. And frankly, the sand just kind of fits in, into all the cracks and the nooks in between all of the rocks, and you can get everything in to the jar. Now, in reality, some things may not fit in the jar, but if you're going to not have something fit in the jar, what would you rather omit? Would you rather omit a big rock, which is something that actually is important can advance the company and your team and your own work area. Or would you rather omit a few grains of sand? Which are these requests that are coming in from other people that you have very little control over, I would argue you let some of the sand spill out if something is not going to fit much better that it's sand than one of these big, important pieces of work that are gonna actually help you succeed.

# Skillset vs Mindset
So once again, as always, you will hear from me that the suggestions I'm gonna give you are both a skill set and a mindset. The skill set here is simple. It's to take a coffee break to go get some perspective, bring someone with you talk about it. What are the things we can really do that are gonna help grow the business in my area. For me, this area that I own, for the team, for the company, think about those things and prioritize them. That's the skill set. The mindset is the willingness to change what's important. What has gotten you here is not going to get you there. That is the mindset change. You have to change a habit or a belief around what is going to set you apart. And what does success look like for many of us, high achievers, smart, ambitious people, successes look like being responsible, taking care of all the work that comes onto your plate. But I'm challenging you to think differently about that, because success really is advancing these key projects that are going to help you move forward.

# Call to Action
Where are you going to apply this in your work week? Today, I always want to leave you with this question, how do you apply this? Start by taking a coffee break, identify what some of those big projects are, and then put them on your calendar and honor that time that you put on your calendar so you can advance them and make progress. Have a great week.