You’ve heard of the Pareto principle, right? The 80/20-rule… Today a fellow Heretic asked me how to prioritize (in her example her job hunt). It’s the very same question I ask myself every single day — when I look at all the things I could do (and there are a ton): What do I do, what do I table and what do I say no to?
The simple truth is: In most situations you can’t know for sure. You never know what the future will bring or how a particular action will turn out (which is the reason why I’m in love with chaos theory — the flap of a butterfly’s wing could cause the next tropical storm).
The best you can do is — weigh your options, make a gut assessment and then ruthlessly focus on the stuff you believe will give you 80% of the results for 20% of the effort. And skip the rest.