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Prioritize prioritizing what needs to be prioritized
A way to be confident you're working on the right thing
Douglas Finkelstein
May 16, 2024
5 minutes to slow down, laugh, and share something in common. Every Thursday.
Today’s Setlist
🎩 One Theme → Prioritize prioritizing what needs to be prioritized
😄 Funny Business → Why we say bless you
📊 Community Poll → We swear with class
Now, a word from our fake sponsor…
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Prioritize prioritizing what needs to be prioritized
If you didn’t smash your device out of frustration reading this headline, great. Let me explain.
The best way to explain this seemingly nonsensical sentence is by explaining what it isn’t. I’m not saying:
Prioritize what needs to be prioritized.
To me, this is a nonsensical sentence.
Because everything on my plate is important, right? It all needs to be prioritized. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be on my plate and I wouldn’t be stressing that some of it’s not getting done. This sentence implies I am clear on what needs to be prioritized, so I should go do it. But most of the time, I am very unclear on what my priorities are.
So I need to take one step back.
Before I do anything else, I need to get very clear on what my actual priorities are.
And I need to do it very frequently.
THAT is what I am saying.
I asked ChatGPT for some backup on this:
Nailed it! ‘Make setting priorities your top priority’ is what this newsletter is all about.
Could I have just said that from the jump? Sure.
But I already wrote everything.
And because I got you to read this, this theme is way more likely to translate into a positive impact for you. Which is my priority in writing this newsletter.
To make it up to you—and not because I am lazy—I’ll let ChatGPT be much more to the point on why this is a valuable practice:
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
A way to be confident you're working on the right thing
Journal for a few minutes. It always helps. If it doesn’t, email me and I’ll plant a tree in your name.
Reduce The Friction
If you don’t have a place to journal, this is what I utilize for handwritten and digital.
If you don’t know what to journal, do what I do:
Just start writing shit. It doesn’t take long for the priorities to spill out! If it does, the tree offer above still applies.
or
Utilize this 10-min prioritization template I shared many moons ago. Four moons to be exact.
Why do I know it was exactly four moons, you ask?
Because for each of those moons—Wolf, Snow, Worm, Pink—I’ve gathered with cool people to celebrate and make setting priorities my top priority.
I invite you to join us for the Strawberry Moon on June 23rd! I’d love to see you there.
😄 Funny Business
📊 Community Poll
Results for last week’s question: How often do you use curse words?
I, too, am a fan of the artful use of ‘fuck’.
On to this week’s question…
When you sneeze, how many times do you usually sneeze? |
🤝 Halp.
How you can help me:
Did you find my welcome emails (sent on the last few Tuesdays) beneficial or no?
Reply to this email, please let me know so I can make improvements!
How I can help you:
🧱Grow your self | 🔬Grow your business | 🧑🎨You tell me what could help |
 | Begin and end with love,  |
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"You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think." - Marcus Aurelius