project_log: 026

Yo.

I've been struggling with prioritisation lately. I'm trying to make progress in different areas at once and it's not working.

Here's what I'm juggling:

• I want to kill it for my clients.

• I want to write a value-packed newsletter that helps people and showcases my products.

• I want to build software that improves my friends' businesses.

• I want to continue building an audience on Twitter.

All of these are essential. Which makes it fucking hard to prioritise.

I thought brute forcing is the way through. It's not. Trust me. I've tried it for six months. It doesn't work.

At some point you have to make tradeoffs. You have to accept that doing everything at once hurts you more than choosing one thing. If you're a visual thinker, this will help you see the problem.

Once you realise the impact of trying to do everything at once, you say fuck it. I'm going to prioritise. I'm going to build my product and cut out the stuff that can wait.

This feels painful, but you commit. It feels great. You start seeing progress and building momentum.

But after a week, you're tired. You jump on social media for a scroll. You see other people posting daily. They talk about how their lives changed from a simple daily habit of "posting content."

You reimagine that world where social media provides your business with leads. You allocate an hour a week because you'd be stupid not to. But one hour turns to two because your content sucks and gets no “engagement”. Two hours turns to four. Four turns to six. Six turns to ten.

All of a sudden, your product progress stalls. You're back at square one with split focus. You failed to prioritise again. Fuck.

This is how my brain operates. It might be different for you. That's ok. But if this something your struggle with , I got you.

Spotting a season and accepting the tradeoffs is how you push through.

Seasons come and go. This is how I approach the stuff I'm trying to achieve. In seasons of focus and energy.

Each of my goals above are equally important to me. To choose what to focus on, you have to get strategic. You need to identify the most logical order to achieve things in. I can't do this for you, but I can share my thinking:

Killing it for my clients is non-negotiable at my current stage. This is my income. This pays for my lifestyle. The other three aren't essential to survival. This is where we need to think strategically.

I think building the product should take focus over scaling the newsletter and going hard on Twitter. The newsletter and Twitter act as exposure to the product I'm building. But if there's no product to expose, I'm not getting that benefit.

I’ve chosen to prioritise building the product. This means that the other goals are put on the back burner. They aren’t going to get my attention until I hit a validation point with the product. At that point, I’ll pivot. I’ll go all in on scaling this newsletter and twitter.

You can do anything, just not everything.

Quick tips to identify which goal to prioritise:

You need to survive. Focus on that first, then your other goals.

Ask: "What needs to exist before the other thing matters?" You need a proven product before scaling marketing makes sense. You need customers before worrying about retention tools.

Use the "domino effect test." Which goal, if achieved, makes your other goals easier or unnecessary? That's usually your priority.

You have to realise that people are in a different season than you

You won't get to the results of others by measuring against them. They're pursuing a different goal. Measuring your success based on how you compare to them is a losing game.

I shared an example above where you see people posting daily and building a big audience. These people are likely in a season of marketing and brand awareness, not product building. They're spending their attention to grow an audience. Comparing yourself when they're putting in 10X the effort does nothing but make you feel behind.

Instead, we must measure against ourselves. Set goals based on what you want, not what someone else is doing. Once you hit the goal, get strategic again. Understand the tradeoffs, then switch seasons.

To recap:

Prioritisation is how you make two years of progress in two months.

Understand the tradeoff of each path and pick one. Commit.

Stop measuring against other people. Only yourself.

Commit until you reach the goal. Then switch seasons.

You got this. Talk soon, friend.

Will