Organizations suffer from an excess of priorities, a modern phenomenon since the word was originally singular. To restore focus, use the "hell yes" test: if a new initiative doesn't elicit an enthusiastic "hell yes" from stakeholders, it's not a true priority and should be dropped or postponed.
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To achieve rapid growth without burnout, ruthlessly prioritize. Stop doing 90% of tasks and focus exclusively on the few initiatives that have the potential to 10x your business. Treat your focus like a laser that can burn through obstacles, not a wide light that diffuses energy.
When launching a new strategy, define the specific go/no-go decision criteria on paper from day one. This prevents "revisionist history" where success metrics are redefined later based on new fact patterns or biases. This practice forces discipline and creates clear accountability for future reviews.
Don't pitch big ideas by going straight to the CEO for a mandate; this alienates the teams who must execute. Instead, introduce ideas casually to find a small group of collaborative "yes, and" thinkers. Build momentum with this core coalition before presenting the developed concept more broadly.
Instead of complex prioritization frameworks like RICE, designers can use a more intuitive model based on Value, Cost, and Risk. This mirrors the mental calculation humans use for everyday decisions, allowing for a more holistic and natural conversation about project trade-offs.
Before a major business pivot, first identify what can be let go or scaled back. This creates the necessary space and resources for the new direction, preventing overwhelm and ensuring the pivot is an extension of identity, not just another added task on your plate.
Instead of adding more goals, use a three-part filter to audit them. A goal must support your nervous system (peace), meaningfully advance the business (profit), or align with your desired impact (purpose). This ruthless audit eliminates energy-draining tasks that were never truly yours.
To manage three distinct businesses, Haney relies on two core principles. First, an ability to constantly prioritize the single most important task across all domains. Second, a focus on pace and urgency, operating under the mantra that "compression of time equals value."
Most entrepreneurs are trapped doing things they believe they *should* do, leading to burnout with minimal results. The Pareto Principle suggests 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. By auditing your activities to find that 20%, you can eliminate busywork and focus only on what truly moves the needle.
When teams constantly struggle with prioritization, the root cause isn't poor backlog management. It's a failure of upstream strategic filters like market segmentation, pricing, and product discovery. Without these filters, the feature list becomes an unmanageable mess of competing demands.
Counteract the natural tendency to add complexity by deliberately practicing 'relentless subtraction.' Make it a weekly habit to remove one non-essential item—a feature, a recurring meeting, or an old assumption. This maintains focus and prevents organizational bloat.
