How I Get Sh*t Done: Part 1 - Prioritising When Everything Feels Urgent
Welcome to my three-part series on how I get sh*t done.
This post focuses on how I evaluate and prioritise new work as it comes in. Part 2 will cover daily execution and workflows (inside and outside of best laid plans), and Part 3 will dive into solving complex problems systematically.
Workflows: You Design Them All the Time
Every year, before hosting Christmas and various birthday parties, I have a big kitchen clear-out and reorganisation. I also take the opportunity to reconfigure it to make things a bit easier as we evolve as a family – make it easier for the kid to choose and pick his own school snacks, that kind of thing.
And that got me thinking about workflows. How it's absolutely not a practice reserved for Engineers, Ops Managers, or Productivity gurus – we all do it, a lot.
If you think about it, you've likely configured your home for optimisation. Your shoes are by the door. Coffee by the mugs. You've made countless small decisions about how to be more efficient and make the world make sense around you. That's all a workflow is – a repeatable way of doing something that reduces friction and mental load.
You probably have these systems at work too; they don't have to be grandiose. You might check DMs before email. You may batch similar tasks together. You may have a particular way you structure meeting agendas or review documents. These aren't accidents – they're workflows you've developed over time.
But here's what I wonder when I look around sometimes: when's the last time you had a clear-out and changed it around? If you have to walk across the kitchen four times to make a cup’o’joe in the morning ever since you bought your new coffee machine, is your system it still working?
Your rooms might get a clear-out and reorganisation every so often, your summer wardrobe packed away for winter. Your workflow at work? Are you still running on decisions and systems you made when your home was… different?
Working It Out
I consider myself lucky to have had autonomy in my career quite early on. Deciding that traditional academia wasn't for me, I threw myself in the deep end in start-ups after leaving a call-centre role where I was governed by structure to the minute (no bueno), and quickly started figuring out how to make my own decisions – and yes, then better decisions. And we’re all still on that journey. So instead of deciding whether to hit a student event or write that paper that’s due in 12 hours, I was making calls about how many really rather expensive items to stock and setting up ERPs. It wasn't (all 💅) natural talent failing fast - and sometimes quite ruddy hard - taught me to build better systems to move more quickly and accurately in future.
Some of these concepts and models are tried and tested, some newer, but you might find there are elements of these practices you already carry out.
Let’s Begin - Know Your Capacity: The 10-15 Project Rule
Before I can prioritise effectively, I need to understand my actual capacity. We’ll do this first at a meta-level. Research suggests that most people can actively manage between 10-15 projects at once before quality and progress start to suffer. That's 10-15 total, including life outside work. Having more than that, I'm dropping a ball, or heading for burnout. But interestingly, if you have less than 10, that can be a problem too – as projects stall and you've done what you can, you need something else to move to. Also, procrastination thrives where there is too much slack (but you do have to have some slack).
You also need to balance Areas; once I separated Projects from Areas using PARA (more on this in a moment), I could see what was genuinely active versus what was "chop wood, carry water" – a concept our VP introduced me to recently.
The point of that is that some work is foundational maintenance. It's not strategic, it's not exciting, it's not going to transform anything. But it has to get done or floor falls out from under you. Throughout the peaks and troughs, accept that a significant portion of time, effort and resource will go to these routine initiatives that keep systems running. Make space for that. Some days, you're just chopping wood and carrying water. And that's fine. That's the work.
PARA Method (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives)
PARA, developed by Tiago Forte (found him on YouTube - TW: he looks oddly like Musk), is a system for organising information based on actionability. It's helped me see the difference between actual projects and everything else competing for my attention:
Projects: Active work with a defined outcome and deadline. The road from A to B. These are your 10-15 slots. Examples for me: "Build 9-box grid visualisation in Power BI," "Create workflow for process," "Finish Caroline Girvan's Iron Series."
Areas: Ongoing responsibilities with no end date. These need maintenance and likely have a minimum standard you're working to, but aren't projects. Examples: "Learning and Career," "Content Product Operations," "Relationships," "Fitness routine." Areas generate projects, but they aren't projects themselves.
Resources: Reference material and information you might need later. "2026 Strategy," "Power BI tutorials," "Product Operations Content," "Recipes."
Archives: Completed or inactive items from the other three categories.
Value vs Effort (The 2x2)
I like to draw up a quick 2x2 grid with Value on one axis and Effort on the other:
High Value, Low Effort: Quick wins. Yes to dopamine please.
High Value, High Effort: Schedule these strategically and plan collaboration.
Low Value, Low Effort: Spare time fillers.
Low Value, High Effort: Nope🤚
I use this instead of the famous Eisenhower Matrix (Urgent vs Important) because, honestly, it's often hard to know what's objectively urgent and important in the moment. Everything feels urgent when someone else is asking for it. The 2x2 cuts through that. If I’m not sure on the value I use a quick mental model based on …
RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort)
This one comes from product management, and it's been useful for evaluating competing requests, tasks, and projects when you need to dig deeper. In the model, you score each initiative based on:
Reach: How many people will this affect?
Impact: How much will it improve things?
Confidence: How sure are you about your estimates?
Effort: How much time will this take?
Then you calculate: (Reach × Impact × Confidence) / Effort
The higher the score, the higher the priority. It's not perfect, but it gives you a formula to work with when your gut feeling is "everything matters equally" (which really means you're overwhelmed and can't see clearly). This works particularly well when deciding which projects deserve one of your precious 10-15 active slots.
Working Backwards
I’m reigniting my practice in this! Amazon's famous "Working Backwards" process starts with the end result – specifically, the press release you'd write when the project is complete. Before committing your time and energy to anything, you write:
What problem does this solve? What does success look like? Why is this better than what exists now?
The concept is that if you can't write a compelling press release or customer announcement for it, it probably shouldn't be on your priority list. This has been brutal but clarifying for me. I've paused on passion projects at work to make sure my work drives the outcomes that align to my values and goals, as well as the orgs. So many projects sound important in abstract discussions but fall apart when you try to articulate the actual benefit.
The related practice is the six-page narrative memo instead of talking through a PowerPoint. When you have to write full sentences explaining your reasoning, fuzzy thinking becomes obvious fast. I am back in the practice of doing mini-versions of this – writing it out forces me to confront whether I actually have a good reason, good reasoning, or I'm just reacting.
What This Means in Practice
Here’s my mental checklist when something “big” comes in.
Is this a project, or just a task as part of an area? If it's area maintenance, it doesn't take up a project slot - but I need to budget time for it.
If it's a Project, do I have capacity? Am I under 15 active projects? If not, what needs to pause or finish first? Do I pop in in Resource for later?
How does it score? Urgent-Important, or Urgent? Run it through the 2x2 / RICE, whether on paper or as a mental model. Does it earn its place?
These frameworks aren't about being perfect and they don’t account for, well, life – they're about putting yourself in a position that's less "I'm drowning" and more "here's where I'm focusing my energy, and here's why."
Coming Up
Having frameworks for prioritisation is essential, but they're only half the battle. In Part 2, I'll cover the workflows and rituals that turn these prioritisation decisions into actual execution, and how that adjusts in the minutia.
Part 3 will tackle complex problem-solving using systematic approaches I lean on when need to work through issues that don't have obvious solutions… or time for a weighted survey.
