A bad, or no, prioritisation system can kill your company.
Having an effective way to prioritise is one of the best defences against shiny object syndrome (any other business founders suffer?), analysis paralysis, procrastination and untenable life balance.
Reading is my personal killer. I’ve a ton of books, articles and blog posts that I want to read. Left without a system of some sort, I half or quarter-read 20 things at once. And worse, if I’m reading them because I want to do something as a result (e.g. improve sales, or test a business model), then I would stop when action was needed until I had things in place to move forward.
Except that by then, I’d started to read something else while waiting, and repeated the cycle. Am I the only one who does this?
The fix? Get absolute clarity over the bigger priorities, then slot things into that list. So if the shiny thing, the book, the extra hour working doesn’t fit into those priorities, then drop it.
This is even more important for you if you are a leader or founder in your company. Because kicking off your shiny object project will mobilise a team behind you, and you’ve amplified your whim into organisation-wide waste.