[HN Gopher] Prioritization as a Superpower
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Prioritization as a Superpower
Author : firstSpeaker
Score : 77 points
Date : 2022-04-30 10:45 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nbt.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nbt.substack.com)
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| A colleague of mine brings the cryptic crossword to work and
| everyone tries to get at least one. The point is that right next
| to it is the horoscopes - and they are so obviously just full of
| nice platitudes that could apply to anyone.
|
| The list of traits needed for a founder are very similar.
| Flexible - yeah sure that's me. Imaginative? Humble ? tick tick.
|
| What makes a real founder? Dunno. But i doubt it's a priori
| qualities of that person. I would like to see a BC fund randomly
| assign money to citizens. See what realmempircal evidence tells
| us.
| scientist9113 wrote:
| This reminds me about the idea of staying focused that Steve Jobs
| was very fond of. There is an interesting video of Jony Ive
| sharing the lessons he learned from Steve showing how powerful
| and subtle the point of prioritization can be.
| kareemm wrote:
| Maybe I'm just a grump but this class of article is painful:
| you've got hand-wavy unsubstantiated claims and nothing tactical
| a reader can take away to make their life better. You can
| simplify it to a short tweet: "prioritization is really important
| for founders". I'm coming to dislike this kind of content-less
| content - it's a waste of time to produce and consume.
| mywaifuismeta wrote:
| I'm also a grump and I know it's useless when the word
| "superpower" is in the title. I'm just allergic to that word
| and anyone who uses it immediately loses credibility.
| rchaud wrote:
| You fell for the ".substack.com' branding. Initially that used
| to be some kind of quality signifier when they were first
| posted to HN; a writer's oasis free from the editorial yoke of
| big media and the cruft of online advertising.
|
| Now it's mostly Medium.com all over again.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Thank you for pointing this out; I am definitely falling for
| the branding. Now that I realize it I'll be more
| discriminating in what I read from substack.
|
| Thanks again!
| cm2012 wrote:
| It's better because Medium optimizes for clicks while
| substack optimizes for subscribers.
| rchaud wrote:
| What does that mean in practice? I didn't subscribe to read
| this link and neither did you. So optimizing for
| subscribers didn't prevent a low quality article from
| slipping through.
|
| Which means, given time, Substack will go the way of
| Medium. There is no cost to publishing, and Substack
| doesn't have a way to kick spammers, influencers and
| lowest-common denominator content out.
| krisrm wrote:
| Hmm, I found it uplifting. I'm not in the startup space, but I
| feel like I have been struggling with prioritization, without
| really understanding what I was struggling with. In my case,
| the constant tugging from one operational crisis to another has
| made it difficult to focus on long-term goals, and I need to
| learn to let others fight their own fires from time to time so
| I can prioritize tasks I know will have an out-sized effect
| later. Guess it's just a matter of perspective!
| lowwave wrote:
| good thing you brought that up. I have not read the article,
| so not sure if I like it. However, a lot people read articles
| not for thee information, rather style or flavour. I guess
| this is one those for you. Most stuff online don't really
| have anything new to say, it is also mostly PR or marketing
| sometimes.
| krisrm wrote:
| Yeah, you're quite right; nothing new was said here. But, I
| think there is sometimes value in saying things again, or
| differently.
| lowwave wrote:
| >I'm coming to dislike this kind of content-less content - it's
| a waste of time to produce and consume.
|
| Ah just skim the article. The first time says that he is a VC.
| I think one ought to expect that much from VCs. As you can see
| emy expectations for VC is not very hight.
| 2sk21 wrote:
| I agree. This article reminds me of the vacuous advice given to
| new investors: "buy low and sell high" :-)
| jss326 wrote:
| How would I train myself to prioritize better? I tend to do the
| most fun things of my to-do list, or choose tasks that are urgent
| in the short term.
| nelsondev wrote:
| Write down the value/impact of each task, and time to
| completion. Work on tasks with highest value/time-spent.
| mikotodomo wrote:
| This is a very good point. Prioritization is a hugely
| underestimated skill. This article just made me realize I do not
| put enough effort into prioritizing things in my work.
| codemac wrote:
| Priority used to not be plural, and it meant "the first thing".
|
| If you can get it down to the one thing you need to be doing
| right now, you'll be good. If you choose the wrong priority, then
| that's feedback for future priority selection.
|
| Do not choose more than one thing. Just choose more frequently
| the smaller the tasks you need to complete are. Entry level
| engineering is usually a few things a day, the more senior it
| becomes one a day to one a week. Once you're in the executive
| ranks, it becomes one a month/quarter.
|
| The mistake many people make is thinking they need to pick more
| than one thing because they have so many simultaneous things
| occurring. This is an incorrect view of time - you can only do
| one. Pick one. The world's urgency will interrupt you
| sufficiently that the rest is largely just task urgency update
| management.
|
| If you struggle to pick something, I've found alltom's tooling
| great: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/priorities-in-
| motion/id1577124...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If you start every day with 'what's our priority for today' -
| that indicates a lack of planning, a word not mentioned in this
| article. Running around like a chicken sans head is another way
| to describe this kind of leadership. Now if you have a 'priority
| meeting' once a week (at most, once a month might really be
| better) in which tasks are decided on and workloads are passed
| out, then people will be able to concentrate on those tasks.
| Maybe have a once-a-week sit-down meeting with individuals to
| monitor progress, offer encouragement, solve problems that might
| be holding things up, etc.
|
| I sometimes wonder if smartphone culture is at least partially to
| blame for a tendency towards an inability to plan things in
| advance. Smartphones make it easy for people to constantly change
| their schedules, make last-minute arrangements, and they also
| promote the immediate gratification mentality.
| derfabianpeter wrote:
| Starting your day with ,,what's your priority today" is the
| basis of many engineering orgs these days. Most of the time
| it's not a lack of planning but a desire to overplan that leads
| to these daily introspectives.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Now if you have a 'priority meeting' once a week (at most,
| once a month might really be better) in which tasks are decided
| on and workloads are passed out, then people will be able to
| concentrate on those tasks.
|
| That all sounds nice and good in theory, but I think everyone
| who has worked at a startup knows how difficult that can be in
| practice, primarily because you have lots of unexpected issues
| and challenges come up on a day-to-day basis, and at a startup
| (as opposed to a large, established company) there is rarely
| spare capacity to deal with those emergent issues.
|
| Every startup I've ever worked at certainly had weekly or
| biweekly sprint plannings, and monthly status checks, and
| quarterly planning. That didn't really make it any easier to
| solve the constant prioritization struggle of the strategic vs.
| the day-to-day.
| adverbly wrote:
| > If you start every day with 'what's our priority for today' -
| that indicates a lack of planning
|
| How much experience do you have at very early stage startups?
| From my personal experience, things are often very chaotic
| prior to product-market fit. It is wasteful to plan too far in
| advance because there are so many uncertainties. There are too
| many teams that spend a whole lot of time feeling productive
| while scheduling and planning, but in reality they aren't
| actually getting s** done. Not saying this is always the case -
| it depends on the product/industry/tech, but getting things
| done without a clear plan is a very advantageous trait for
| early stage founders.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| pre market product fit this is a disastrous approach
| thenerdhead wrote:
| They are right, but I think the message may be coming from the
| wrong person here. To be fair I don't know this person's history
| nor care to look at the moment. A VC prioritizes writing checks
| and supporting their picks as some sort of coaching role.
|
| If this article came from a founder on their experiences with
| prioritization, I think it would feel more genuine and insightful
| of what you might be able to take away from it.
|
| I work as a big tech PM and prioritization is my job. I've
| explored hundreds of ways to do it. Found some good ones, found
| some bad ones. What I can say is that experience is the only way
| you become accustomed to the characteristics the author is
| mentioning with regards to people who are good at prioritization.
|
| The most effective tool I've found? The 80/20 rule or known as
| Pareto's Principle. That has applied to every single project,
| program, and initiative I've been apart of to large degrees of
| success. It's the most flexible and can apply everywhere.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
|
| Another interesting one depending where you work is the 1% rule.
| This helps you demonstrate whether certain things benefit
| everyone, or just a small but loud few.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| Maybe you should write a blog post. I misread your name to be
| "nerd herd" as in a verb, herding nerds.
|
| Can you elaborate on applying 80/20 rule in projects. Do you
| focus on 20% of the most important deliverables? 20% of
| timeline (focus on bottlenecks)?
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Here's one!
|
| https://jondouglas.dev/the-pareto-pm/
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Thanks! This is the post I wish I'd read instead of TFA ;)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| For more substantial and actionable guidance, I recommend the
| book "Algorithms to Live By".
| thePrioritizer wrote:
| Last year I launched a perfect tool exactly for prioritization /
| item selection from any list.
|
| For example, you can choose your most necessary goals using
| SMART++ criteria (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic,
| Time-phased, Ethical, Environmentally sound, Positively stated,
| etc.). Or you can prioritize weekly tasks, evaluating them by
| your criteria of choice (Urgency, Importance, Unavoidability,
| Manageability, Impact, Ethical, social, and ecological
| responsibility, Financial return, etc.)
|
| Or the author of the article, as an investor, could get help
| choosing a founding team for funding, evaluating them by the
| criteria he mentioned: hungry, humble, knowledgeable, and
| attractive for talent.
|
| Here is the link: https://www.1st-things-1st.com
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