Every CEO’s job is to prioritize. It’s to decide what to do, and more importantly, what not to do. Once they do that, they communicate the priorities to their teams—sometimes tens of thousands of people—and those teams get it done.
I want to repeat this: the leader’s most important task is to prioritize. Even thousands of smart people can easily scramble and get nothing done if they don’t focus.
This heuristic applies to an individual level too. I used to think that I’d have so much time after I quit full-time work to do the things I wanted to do. These projects included writing a new book, starting a newsletter, going to the gym, seeing more sights in NYC, spending more time with family and friends, etc. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that even without a full-time job, there wasn’t even close to enough time to do half the things I wanted to.
When you decide what you want to do and prioritize it, it often means also giving up many other things—and deciding that you won’t do them, no matter how badly you want to.
You’ll know you’re doing it right when you give something important up. It will hurt.