Sequential prioritization

A rant against multi-tasking

Hi all —

Multi-tasking is impossible, and we all need to stop pretending it can work.

Individuals and teams should have singular focuses at any point in time. Only one project is underway; everything else waits until the project in focus is done.

If you run a company, or even a function within a company, you lose a little sanity each time you hear:

• “It’s mostly done”

• “My part is done”

• “I didn’t get to it yet, other things came up”

• “I wasn’t sure what to focus on”

• “Wait, why did you do that?”

And so what happens in response? We buy project management software. Create or follow absurd processes. Bring in consultants (gasp) and corporate folks to professionalize us. Overhead blooms and we all become ticket-pushing bureaucrats.

But when we do these things, we’re focused on symptoms. The cause is multi-tasking at the individual and team level, when sequential prioritization prevents all these symptoms from occurring.

If an engineering team is just focused on shipping ONE thing at a time, project management becomes impossibly simple. If you as a founder just focus on ONE of the many important projects you have mid-flight, you’ll actually get it done and be able to move on to the next one.

Getting things done compounds, while multi-tasking ensures you’ll take longer to get ANYTHING complete.

Sequential prioritization has downsides, of course:

It means you’ll be bad at some things, because you’re not focused on them. (And that’s ok!)

On a team level, it will mean that some people won’t be fully utilized at any one point in time. But remember: What matters is the velocity of SHIPPED WORK, not the utilization of PEOPLE.

You have to get good at shaping projects. Not an easy task.

And finally, it means you have to ruthlessly prioritize ONE thing to the exclusion of everything else. You have to be strong-willed to do this.

Try it yourself this week: What’s your most important project? What happens if you just focus on getting that done, what can you accomplish?