Avanceé.Agency

Musings on designing experiences & (re)engineering complexity

Oct 2019

On Prioritization

When you get into a consistent mode of behaviors and then life gets in the way, you start the journey again by making an excuse. However, here there is no real excuse. There are several layers of drafts, not in the Microblog application, which are ideas and concepts which have not been completely flushed out. And sometimes those are posted just to keep with the usual cadence. However, this week that is not been the case. There has been a solid challenge to prioritization of content following here. And that’s probably a better description of inhibitors to moving forward than any excuses leveled in writing.

When it comes to writing, working, living… prioritization makes its way into the front of your conscious decisions whether you like it or not. It could be as complicated as which area of a project to begin. It could be as simplistic as looking at the weather report to figure out how you will address your garden. What you choose to prioritize is what you have chosen to say matters. However, no amount of prioritization comes without putting down something else. As a wise person once said, “there’s only so much room in your hands. You can either choose to hold peace, or hold the things that take peace away from you.“

There in lies the challenge with prioritization. What you value is what you eventually prioritize. More often than not, the thing that we value is as close as the item which is in front of our nose. That may not be fair, but given the amount of information that comes our direction, the amount of wants which follow our wish list, we sometimes default to what we can immediately perceive rather than what we truly value.

And yes, we can use the excuse that with certain levels of technology, there is no excuse. A change schedule could mean more time to write and contemplate, but if that does not continue to elevate what you have previously called a priority, then that changed schedule is more accurately telling you what you value. As we noticed with some of the technology trends that have happened, collaboration being put in front of us often leaves us a little time to self prioritize. And yet, the assumption from this space, and even some of the investigation, is that there is room to prioritize those things that matter if collaboration works in concert with deep thought.

If prioritization is in fact a high value behavior, then you do make time for what matters. An excuse, put in the position of a welcome, really serves notice that prioritization is not a high-value item. It would be better off, and perhaps received better, if you simply said that prioritization didn’t matter, and allowed a different characteristic to guide what you value.