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CHAPTER 6

CLARIFY ENERGY

Instead of saying, “I don’t have time,” try saying, “It’s not a priority,” and see how that feels.

LAURA VANDERKAM

We rush through our days, and more often than not we find ourselves with a to-do list that stretches about five miles long. We feel pride in that fat line crossing out a task, proving that we are qualified to wear our badge of busy.

But when all tasks are created equal, how does anyone know where to focus their energy? This is at the heart of why we spend our days running only to fall into bed at night wondering why it feels like nothing got done. It’s because the important tasks—the tasks that should be at the top of our list—seem to fall to the side. The urgent tasks scream and cry out for our attention, so we spend our days putting out fires.

This is why you need to toss that to-do list straight into the fire. I know it’s scary. As Marilyn Ferguson said, “It’s Linus when his blanket1 is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.” You feel unstable because your brain craves those dopamine hits it gets every time you place a neat little check mark next to a task. But you gotta do it.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE TO-DO LIST

Our worth is not tied to the length of our to-do list. We allow this constrictive notion of merit to define us, but we are simply overwhelming ourselves. Remember our definition of what it means to be overwhelmed? Overwhelm isn’t having too much to do; it’s not knowing where to start. Our long checklist doesn’t show us where to start. Instead, it confuses us more, spinning us in circles as we feverishly scan our tasks, wondering how we will possibly get it all done.

Yes, it makes us feel busy, but it doesn’t make us productive—this is the dark side of the to-do list. It keeps us running all day long, never moving us closer to where we want to be. As Henry David Thoreau asked, “It’s not enough to be busy2; so are the ants. The question is, What are we busy about?” If we don’t know, we’re not really busy about anything—anything of importance to you, that is. It means we are wasting our precious energy in all the wrong places.

People love checking items off their to-do lists. Have you ever written down something on your list that you’ve already completed, just so you could check it off? I used to do that too. The problem is, if we are putting items on our lists just to check them off, then our lists aren’t helping us be more effective—they are turning us into dopamine junkies.

Dopamine is a chemical in our brains that’s responsible for the feeling of satisfaction we receive when we accomplish something. That good feeling you get when you cross an item off your list? Dopamine. Our brains love dopamine because it gives us that feel-good moment.

When we write down a list of tasks that are easy to cross off, we allow our brains to get addicted. We want that hit of dopamine, so without realizing it, we pack our lists full of menial tasks simply for the pleasure of crossing them off. We are using our lists3 as mood enhancers, not as productivity tools.

To-do lists tend to be unorganized and long because there’s no filtering system. We simply add items as we think of them. When we scan our jumbled lists looking for our next task, our brains push us to choose the easiest wins—searching for a faster dopamine payoff. You see, dopamine doesn’t distinguish between important and unimportant; it just knows that crossing items off our lists feels good. And that means that the important tasks on our lists end up waiting to get crossed off. Let’s be honest, it’s usually those longer tasks that will move us toward the life we want. Our true priorities continue to get pushed farther and farther down on our lists, forgotten and undone.

When we are focused mainly on short-term wins, we aren’t making sure our day fits our bigger vision—our North Star visions of our lives. Instead, we end up spending large chunks of our time responding to fires simply because it feels so good to get that dopamine. This is why we feel busy. All. The. Time.

A survey of professionals conducted by LinkedIn found that by the end of the average workday4, only 11 percent of professionals had accomplished all the tasks on their list. Our to-do lists are supposed to be a snapshot of our day, but here’s the question: If 89 percent of professionals feel they’ve not accomplished their tasks, how do they feel at the end of the day?

To-do lists take energy away from the important tasks—the ones we must accomplish to create the impact we really want. We need to curate a list that highlights the route our North Star is guiding us toward, where each day we use our energy to get closer to our purpose and the big dreams and goals that go along with our North Star. We want a priority list. A priority list helps us look at the limited time we have so that we can choose where to spend our precious energy.

YOU NEED A PRIORITY LIST

When we use a priority list, we stop wasting energy deciding what to do next, or whether to start with the hardest or the easiest tasks—instead, we work by priority. Focusing on our priorities is what separates the busy from the truly productive.

A good priority list takes the same amount of time to create as a to-do list, but because you filter it through your priority levels, you consciously choose where to spend your energy—and where you don’t. The list is structured for you to begin your day at the top with the highest priority tasks and work your way down. The feeling of overwhelm vanishes because you understand exactly where to start and what tasks you want to focus on next. You have a clear path for your day.

Our priority list is made of three levels: Escalate, Cultivate, and Accommodate. Let’s look at each one, starting with the top.

ESCALATE: IMPORTANT AND URGENT

These tasks are pushing us toward long-term goals and they have a pressing deadline.

FOCUSING ON OUR PRIORITIES IS WHAT SEPARATES THE BUSY FROM THE truly PRODUCTIVE

EXAMPLES: last-minute adjustments to a project after receiving feedback from your boss, your car breaking down, or a report or term paper with an imminent deadline.

This section goes at the top of our list because this is where we want to start our day. These items are our top priority—we need to escalate them. However, we don’t want to spend all of our time on Escalated Tasks because, by being in urgency mode, we are playing beat-the-clock. If we focus all of our time on these Escalated Tasks, we don’t allow ourselves the time to innovate or explore creative solutions. It’s a defensive position, and we can’t do our best work when we are in reactive mode.

We want to be effective and do our best work, so we want to avoid feeling this state of critical emergency and stress. We can actually eliminate many of our Escalated tasks by planning ahead. Long-term projects can be scheduled out so they’re finished with plenty of time left (thus doing a better job and making them not urgent), the car can be taken in for regular maintenance so it does not break down, and so on.

We want to avoid Escalated situations whenever possible, but we’ll never be able to eliminate them. Fires will always crop up—the boss assigns a last-minute presentation, the internet goes down, your kid gets sick at school—but for things that are in our control, we want to stay out of urgency mode.

CULTIVATE: IMPORTANT BUT NOT URGENT

These are activities that move us closer to our end goals because they are focused around future planning and self-improvement but have no looming deadline.

EXAMPLES: creating a budget plan, long-term projects, or developing processes and workflows.

Being in a situation without an urgent deadline allows us to do our best work because we have the time to really push ourselves and innovate. We can dive deeper into thinking of creative solutions; we are not in panic mode where we cannot think clearly. Because there’s no urgency, though, we tend to push these items to the back burner until they finally do ignite, and then we end up feeling like we are fighting a wildfire with a garden hose.

While our priority list is divided into three sections, they are not evenly divided. We need to place the most emphasis on this section. This is the area where we will grow by leaps and bounds because we have time to nurture tasks and do our best work. We want to move out of urgency mode so we can be effective. The seeds we plant today we will cultivate, and they will grow fruit for the future.

ACCOMMODATE: UNIMPORTANT BUT URGENT

These are tasks with a pressing deadline, but they don’t really help us focus on our North Star or our long-term goals.

EXAMPLES: the majority of the phone calls and emails we receive or volunteering for (or being pressured to accept) a project that does not align with our priorities. (This is the “good girl syndrome,” when we just can’t say no when someone asks us to do something.) We want to spend as little time in this section as possible, but because of the urgency, these tasks tend to scream out louder than the rest.

I intentionally titled this priority level Accommodate to remind us that these tasks are less significant and shouldn’t be at the top of our list. We simply need to accommodate them, not revolve our day around them. It’s a mindset shift of bumping these screaming tasks to the bottom of the list, to be completed after we’ve done our important work. That may cause some discomfort, but we need some disruption in order to change what we’ve always done.

I would like to challenge you to think about what tasks you can get rid of completely in this section by either deleting or delegating them: Do you have to load the dishwasher yourself, or can the other members of the household do that? Do you have to pick up the phone every time you get a call in the middle of your work time, or can you set a boundary for when you have the time to devote to talking? This is where you need to comb through your tasks and figure out what you actually do want to spend your time doing or how you want to focus your energy.

I want to point out that unlike the Eisenhower Matrix, upon which this priority-list system is based, there’s no fourth section of unimportant and nonurgent tasks. I intentionally designed this priority-list system to exclude those tasks. I don’t think we should bother writing them down because they are not priorities in any way, shape, or form. They are best described as time wasters, so even the task of writing them out is precious time wasted.

Looking at our tasks by priority helps us see what needs to be done now (Escalate), what should be worked on for long-term wins (Cultivate), and what should be reevaluated (Accommodate). I know we keep going back to our definition of overwhelm, but it’s true—when we know where to start, it empowers us to feel more in charge of ourselves and motivates us to work on the important areas of our life. A good priority list tells us exactly where to start.

Now that you understand the priority list, I want to pose a scenario for you to see where you would rank a task on your own list. Ready?

You bought a blue shirt at Target, only to get home and realize it just doesn’t fit. The return deadline is in one week—where does this task fall on your list?

CIRCLE ONE:ESCALATECULTIVATEACCOMMODATE

Circled one? I’ll check in at the end of this chapter and we’ll see how you did.

URGENT VS. IMPORTANT

Prioritizing isn’t hard, but one of the stumbling blocks I often see is that we confuse urgent with important. Many people think these words are synonymous and can be used almost interchangeably. Let’s break them down: IMPORTANT TASKS: contribute to our priorities; they fulfill what is at the heart of what we want to do; they are the stepping stones to move us toward our North Star.

URGENT TASKS: have a looming deadline; these are the tasks that are screaming at us, the fires that attract our attention.

At their core, urgent tasks are tied only to time. Because they are the items on your list with exclamation points, though, they tend to get your focus first—even if they are not tied to your priorities. In fact, most times they are not: the last-minute request from a coworker to help on a project she procrastinated on that has now hit its deadline, the pings on your phone from a friend who’s got work drama, and probably 80 percent of what’s in your email inbox at this very minute. We. Must. Check. Email.

Most of the urgent items on your list are not important; they just feel that way because they scream and yell. Urgent pushes and jostles its way in, elbowing out Important and bullying its way to the front, while Important sits undone. Here’s a secret I want to share with you, though: if you prioritize the important tasks, you get to a place where you don’t have any urgent tasks. You become proactive, and those fires don’t even get a chance to ignite.

Urgency mode puts us in a reactive situation because we are working quickly against the clock. Importance mode puts us in a proactive position, allowing us to stay levelheaded and focused.

Jeanne was a student in my liveWELL Method course who was just weeks away from returning to work after maternity leave. She would meet on our live calls with her two adorable babies bouncing on her knee. She seemed to love her newfound motherhood5 and she loved her job, so she wanted to make sure she was giving work and home her true focus.

As any new mother will tell you, this is a challenge—there’s so much to do, and adjusting to the new parenthood role takes some time.

I got some good insight into Jeanne’s struggles when she shared one of her completed exercises with me. The lesson was focused on looking at a list of tasks and deciding what on the list is important and what is merely urgent. [Spoiler alert: Most of the tasks on this list (and your list) are urgent but not important.] Jeanne, though, had listed every single item as important. Every single one. No wonder she felt overwhelmed. Caring for two new babies is hard enough, but when you don’t know your top priority, it’s extraordinarily difficult to know where to start—which is when overwhelm sets in. I don’t think Jeanne is alone, though. We rush through our days putting out so many fires that we don’t have time to stop and ask ourselves what needs to happen first.

GETTING CLEAR ON WHAT’S IMPORTANT

Not understanding what is important causes us to have priority blindness. Similar to the information blindness I talked about in chapter 3, we are so bombarded with tasks and requests that they blind us and we lose sight of what is truly important.

And so we continue to pile more and more priorities on ourselves, which does nothing but weigh us down, keeping us from the life we want. We have to ask ourselves: Weighed down as we are, what do we throw overboard when our boat is sinking?

There’s nothing like an emergency to crystallize what’s important. When your ship is sinking, it suddenly becomes easy to decide what to jettison over the side—certainly not the family heirlooms or photo albums. In moments like these, it’s easier to realize that everything else is just dead-weight dragging your boat down into the murky depths.

You don’t want to wait for a crisis to help you gain clarity on what’s important. You don’t need to wait until your boat is floundering to decide where to spend your energy. You need to become CLEAR on what is most important.

Important tasks are hard to define, I know. To make the process easier, I’ve created the CLEAR framework to help you differentiate the important from the merely urgent: The process of “getting CLEAR” is easy, and you can do it anywhere—just use what I call the five-finger test. Ask yourself the five questions in the CLEAR framework, and each time you answer yes, simply raise a finger. If you have three or more fingers raised, you know the item deserves to be treated as important. Two fingers or fewer? That’s an unimportant task.

ASK YOURSELF: IS THIS CONNECTED TO MY NORTH STAR?

I talked in the first section of the book about the importance of a North Star and how we use it to help us intentionally make choices. Your North Star determines how you want to spend your time, energy, and focus—the three key commodities when it comes to productivity. It can also help clarify what’s important.

Herb Kelleher, former CEO of Southwest Airlines6, is a great example of a person who had to make big decisions all day every day. When he was CEO, he filtered his decision making process by asking this question: Will this help Southwest be the low-cost provider?

Southwest’s mission was to7 “connect people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel,” so you can see that Kelleher’s filtering question is tied directly to that North Star. Using this filter paid off; Southwest Airlines has continually been an award-winning airline and has found success even in tough economic times while other airlines have failed.

Questions to Go Deeper:

•Is this tied to my mission statement?

•Does this task align with my core values?

•Is this going to help me move closer to my vision?

ASK YOURSELF: IS IT LINKED TO A GOAL?

I always knew I’d be a millionaire8 by age thirty-two. In fact, I am going to be the richest black woman in America.

OPRAH WINFREY, 1986

It took Oprah years to accomplish her goal, but I think we can all agree she crushed it. She didn’t have a magic ball; instead, she had been setting goals her entire career.

As she puts it, “The big secret in life9 is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.” That work becomes easier if we consistently, intentionally work toward our larger goals. When we set goals, we direct our energy in a forward motion. Our goals drive us closer to the ideal life we are seeking.

Earlier in the chapter I talked about the ineffective tendency to choose tasks we can easily tick off our list. Really, though, we should be spending our energy on the deeper work. If you can link the needle-moving tasks to your goals, it transforms them into a meaningful decision. As I discussed in chapter 4, goals are an extension of the foundation we create with our North Star.

Because they help us get to the vision we have for ourselves, goals should be a key part of our decision-making process when deciding if a task is important. When we link our daily tasks to our goals, we make small steps forward every single day. Small steps lead to bigger steps, which then lead to running. That’s the momentum we need.

Questions to Go Deeper:

•Is this task a key part of accomplishing my goal?

•Is this chore propelling me closer to my goal?

ASK YOURSELF: IS IT ESSENTIAL?

I don’t read work emails after 7 p.m.10 or on weekends. And if you work for me, may I suggest you put down your phone.

This is Shonda Rhimes’s email signature, which makes it evident that even one of the most successful producers in Hollywood is a woman with well-defined boundaries. You need boundaries too.

Whether you are CEO of the office or the home (or both!), you have to keep in mind that CEO doesn’t stand for Chief Everything Officer. Ask yourself: What are the obligations I am taking on that could be done by someone else?

Rhimes views delegation as opportunities for growth. To create a multitude of successful shows, she needs to allow others to rise and take on tasks. “I look at it this way,” she shared. “If the thing that ABC is paying me11 for is storytelling—not to make sure that a costume is exactly right or all those other things—then it is up to me . . . so that that function of my job can happen.” She admits that if you allow it, work will fill all your time 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Parkinson’s law applies to all of us regardless of fame or fortune. As Rhimes said, “It suddenly occurred to me12 that unless I just say, ‘That’s not going to happen,’ it was always going to happen.” Questions to Go Deeper:

•Is this something that needs to be done by me?

•Is this something I cannot outsource or delegate?

ASK YOURSELF: IS IT ADVANTAGEOUS?

We want to consistently work on tasks that have a return on investment—the time we put into them pays off in dividends down the road. Our time is a finite commodity that we are consistently investing in the tasks and chores we choose to do, so you need to question how you are spending this time.

Remember the Pareto Principle that I discussed in chapter 5? I shared that Warren Buffett attributes 90 percent of his wealth to just ten of the companies he had invested in. Where do you think he spends his energy?

Buffett shared, “The difference between successful people13 and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” While he used to pursue shiny objects, he realized chasing after every idea only wore him out. He uses a two-list strategy to help him zero in on his 20 percent. Buffett says to write down twenty-five goals or tasks, then circle the top five. Those are your focus.

And what do you do with the other twenty? Forget about them. According to Buffett, they’re only distractions until you’ve achieved success with your top five. Remember, focused energy14 creates the biggest impact.

Keep in mind, however, that there’s more to life than goals. I know—can you believe I just said that? But there is. To live a wholistic* life, you need to make sure you are continuing to spend some amount of time on tasks that are connected to a cause, a belief—something that impassions you. These tasks may not be directly tied to your goals or your North Star, but they are deeply satisfying. Do not undervalue work that feeds your soul.

Questions to Go Deeper:

•Is this allowing me to focus on the key parts of my business or life that will help me grow?

•Is this fulfilling to me spiritually, emotionally, or psychologically?

ASK YOURSELF: IS IT REALITY-BASED?

Oftentimes we feel that something is important because we believe it’s something we are supposed to do—even if it’s not something we really want. These tasks are so deeply entwined with our stories and our need for perfection that we don’t even realize it. We feel tied to the obligation, and we lose sight of why we are even doing the task in the first place.

I think one of the best ways to illustrate this is by sharing how my own stories led me to misunderstand what’s important.

For years I told myself a story: a good mom always bakes birthday cakes for her family. I don’t know where this belief came from, but it was definitely one of the requirements, in my head, to be the perfect mom.

I baked lemon cakes for John, strawberry cakes for Kate, and chocolate cakes for Jack. I normally enjoy baking the cakes, even if they aren’t beautifully decorated like the ones in the pastry shop window. One fall, though, baking felt more like a task than a treat. I was fresh off the fall launch of our planners, was prepping for the launch on my course, and had several speaking events. The thought of baking a cake from scratch about did me in. I was going to do it, though, no matter what. I had to make that cake; I was determined to be a good mom.

About four days before Kate’s birthday, we went out to pick up my baking supplies. I was stressed. And tired. And unmotivated. But I plastered a smile on my face and herded us out the door—I was doing this!

As we went into the grocery store, I noticed Kate peering at the bakery case.

“Would you like me to buy you a cake?” I teased, laughing at the idea.

She looked up with a hint of longing. “Could we?”

I stopped short. “Really?” I asked.

“Oh yes!” she said excitedly. Really?! I thought to myself. And then she timidly asked, “Could they write my name on it? In cursive? With flowers?” Why yes, my love, they could.

At that moment I realized I was prioritizing all wrong. I was thinking all about my expectations—not hers. Together we picked out a cake, and my girl was so pleased I could hardly stand it. All that stress. All that fretting—because I hadn’t thought to ask what she really wanted. I decided in that moment that the following year I’d happily make her a cake from scratch or buy one from the store. Really, it’s up to her.

Let’s ask ourselves: Are we allowing our stories to dictate our days?

Questions to Go Deeper:

•Is this task something that really needs to happen or is it tied to a story I am telling myself?

•Am I getting caught up in perfectionism and nit-picking this in an effort to make it perfect?

THE BLUE SHIRT REVISITED

Remember that shirt you bought at Target? Did you decide which priority level it should be assigned?

Usually when I share this scenario, people say it’s an Escalated Task. When I ask why, they say it’s urgent because it needs to be returned soon. And I agree, it is an urgent task.

But is it important? Generally someone will tell me they want their money back or they need to be mindful of their budget; therefore, it’s important. But is it? Using the CLEAR framework, is this task really important?

It actually fits under the section of our list labeled Accommodate—urgent but unimportant. I want to clarify that just because something is at the bottom of the list doesn’t mean it doesn’t get done—it just gets done last. After we complete our important work, then we tackle the unimportant. Don’t start your day running to Target—end your day there. We aren’t throwing out our tasks in the Accommodate level of our list; we just are not focusing the majority of our prime time on them.

I shared this T-shirt story as part of a keynote I was giving to CEOs not that long ago. Hannah, a powerhouse CEO from Silicon Valley, approached me afterward and challenged this idea. She agreed with me that the task should be labeled Accommodate, but she informed me that her time was not worth the return trip to Target. She explained that she pays herself a virtual hourly rate of $5,000, and to spend thirty minutes was not a good use of her time. She said, “I would donate it15. Give it to someone who needs it.” As you can imagine, I liked Hannah immediately. She’s right. Even if you don’t virtually pay yourself $5,000 an hour, you will spend $5 on gas to return a $15 shirt. Not to mention the time you will spend driving across town, standing in line, and somehow ending up spending yet another $100 at Target (you know we all do it).

Take that time and money and spend it somewhere you do deem important. If sticking to your budget is high on your list of priorities, take five minutes to try on the shirt before you leave the store. That’s a five-minute investment to make sure you don’t waste thirty later on.

In the busy throes of everyday life, we all have moments when we lose sight of our priorities. It’s easy to push what’s important aside to make room for the loud and obnoxious urgent that’s pulling us in all directions.

Your decisions set the course for your destination. In section 1, we set the path for our North Star, and now we have the clarity to begin our journey. In moments when you find yourself turning in circles, just as I did in my kitchen all those years ago, stop and take a deep breath and ask yourself the five CLEAR questions: Is it Connected to my North Star?

Is it Linked to a goal?

Is it Essential?

It is Advantageous?

Is it Reality-based?

Then put the task where it belongs on your priority list. Starting from the top and working your way down that list will give you the clarity you need to know how to spend your time, energy, and focus in ways that move you forward toward your ideal life.