Prioritisation

Prioritisation matters because executing the wrong work even executing it brilliantly wastes your scarcest resources (time, attention, money) on low-yield outcomes whilst high-impact opportunities languish. Most organisations suffer from chronic yes-itis: leadership agrees to every reasonable-sounding project, vastly overcommitting capacity and ensuring nothing completes properly. Systematic prioritisation forces the uncomfortable but necessary choice: explicitly saying no to decent ideas so you can fully resource great ones. For growth teams especially, where experimentation generates more promising ideas than capacity allows, prioritisation frameworks prevent cognitive biases like recency bias (newest ideas seem most exciting), sunk-cost fallacy (continuing initiatives because we've already invested), and authority bias (CEO's pet project gets resources regardless of merit). The frameworks also create transparency and shared understanding: when the scoring methodology is explicit, disagreements shift from politics ("my initiative matters more because I'm senior") to evidence ("here's data suggesting this initiative will reach 10× more users"). Prioritisation frameworks also surface hidden assumptions when you're forced to estimate impact, confidence, and effort numerically, vague optimism becomes concrete predictions you can later validate or refute. Research on high-performing product and marketing teams consistently shows they complete 3-5× fewer initiatives than average teams but achieve substantially better results because their initiatives are genuinely high-impact rather than scattered effort across dozens of marginal improvements. The discipline also reduces stress and improves morale: teams with clear priorities know their work matters and aren't constantly context-switching between competing demands, whilst deprioritised stakeholders at least understand why their request wasn't resourced rather than feeling ignored.

Originally from WiderFunnel, PIE scores each idea by Potential, Importance and Ease (sometimes Effort).

Potential asks how much improvement the page or channel could see if the test wins. A landing page converting at two per cent has higher potential than one already at ten per cent.

Importance covers volume and strategic value: a pricing page with 5,000 visits a month outranks a blog post with 300.

Ease measures resources—design, dev, sign-off.

Score each on a ten-point scale, add them, and sort descending. PIE is fast, great for quick-turn website experiments, but light on long-tail upside or confidence weighting.

President Eisenhower Matrix is an urgent-important grid helps when the backlog mixes reactive tasks with strategic bets.

• Important and urgent – fix a broken form swallowing leads.
• Important but not urgent – build a case-study hub.
• Urgent but not important – last-minute internal report formatting.
• Neither – archive.
  

In growth contexts I run the quadrant exercise once a fortnight; it keeps the team from spending prime focus time on low-importance fires.

After completing your brain dump, the next step is to create order from the chaos by prioritising what you’ve captured. This chapter focuses on establishing a clear hierarchy for your work, helping you identify what matters most and where to focus your energy.

Most organisations and teams have goals, but very few take the time to rank these goals and their associated key results. Without a clear hierarchy, everything can feel equally important, leading to inefficiency and stress.

By following the steps in this chapter, you’ll prioritise your objectives, projects, and roles, ensuring your time is allocated effectively. This process forces tough but necessary decisions that bring clarity and allow you to work on the right things, not just the urgent ones.

Step 1: Prioritise your objectives and key results

Start by ranking your objectives and key results (OKRs). Objectives define your highest-level goals, and key results measure progress toward achieving them. Ranking these creates a foundation for prioritising everything else.

Most companies fail to prioritise their OKRs clearly, leaving teams confused about where to focus. By using the Brain dump template from the previous chapter, you can rank your objectives in column C and your key results in column E. This ranking will guide your decision-making for all subsequent steps.

Action steps

• Review your objectives and key results from the brain dump.
• Rank your objectives in column C of the template based on importance, #1 being the most important and work your way down.
• Rank your key results for each objective in column E, focusing on impact.

Prompts

• Which objectives have the most significant impact on your long-term goals?
• If you could only achieve one objective this quarter, which would it be?
• Which key results will drive measurable progress?

Example

Objective #1: Build an engaged audience

1. Build the Working Smarter newsletter.
2. Build the B2B newsletter.
3. Build the E-commerce newsletter.
4. Achieve exceptional email engagement (open rate 50% and CTR 5%).
5. Grow email subscribers to 2,000.
6. Reach 20,000 organic sessions.

Objective #2: Scale outstanding courses

1. Launch the Master Your Workweek course.
2. Launch the B2B Growth Blueprint course.
3. Launch the B2B Growth Engine course.
4. Launch the E-commerce Blueprint course.
5. Launch the E-commerce Growth Engine course.
6. Achieve an average course rating of 8/10 or higher.
7. Convert 10% of pre-module users to paid users.
8. Get 1,000 free course subscribers.

Step 2: Rank your projects based on priority

Once your objectives and key results are ranked, move on to your projects. For each key result, identify and rank the associated projects in order of importance. Focus on impact rather than urgency prioritise projects that directly contribute to achieving your key results.

Action steps

• Review the projects linked to each key result in your Brain dump template.
• Rank projects within each key result, starting with the most impactful as #1 and work your way down.
• Use the priority rankings in your template to organise the list further.

Prompts

• Which projects are critical to achieving your key results?
• Are there projects that create disproportionate results compared to their effort?
• Which projects can be paused or delegated?

Step 3: Prioritise your roles

Your roles represent the various hats you wear in your professional and personal life. Prioritising these roles ensures that your energy is allocated to areas where you provide the most value.

Action steps

• List all the roles you currently fulfil (e.g., SEO specialist, content marketer).
• Rank these roles based on their importance and impact on your objectives, #1 being the most important and work your way down.
• Identify any roles that could be reduced, delegated, or eliminated.

Prompts

• Which roles align most closely with your OKRs?
• Where do you provide the greatest impact or value?
• Are there roles you’ve outgrown or can delegate?

Step 4: Rank responsibilities within each role

Once your roles are prioritised, take a closer look at the responsibilities associated with each role. Ranking these responsibilities will help you focus on the most important tasks within each role.

Action steps

• For each role, list all associated responsibilities.
• Rank these responsibilities in order of importance, starting with those directly contributing to your objectives or key results. #1 being the most important and work your way down.
• Note any responsibilities that can be streamlined, delegated, or removed.

Prompts

• Which responsibilities directly impact your OKRs or projects?
• Are there recurring tasks that provide little value or can be automated?
• Which responsibilities would have the most negative impact if neglected?

Step 5: Identify standalone projects and tasks

Standalone projects and tasks are actions that don’t link directly to your OKRs or roles but still require attention. Prioritising these ensures nothing critical falls through the cracks while allowing you to address quick wins efficiently.

Action steps

• Review the list of standalone projects and tasks from your brain dump.
• Rank these based on importance and alignment with your overall goals, #1 being the most important and work your way down.
• Identify any low-priority items that can be deferred, delegated, or eliminated.

Prompts

• Are there quick tasks or projects that can create significant results?
• Are there standalone items that don’t contribute to your OKRs or roles?
• Which tasks could be tackled in a focused time block to reduce clutter

Conclusion

Prioritisation is not just about organising your workload it’s about creating clarity and intentionality in how you approach your work and life. By systematically ranking your objectives, key results, projects, roles, and standalone tasks, you gain a clear roadmap for where to direct your time and energy.

This process isn’t always easy; it requires making tough decisions and letting go of tasks that don’t align with your core goals. But the payoff is transformative: you’ll work smarter, reduce stress, and achieve meaningful progress on the things that truly matter.

Now that you’ve established a hierarchy for your priorities, the foundation is set for the next step: crafting a task management system that keeps you focused and on track. With your priorities as a compass, you’re ready to build systems that turn clarity into consistent, impactful action.