What are you optimizing for?
(And what’s the step before the step?)
“What are you optimizing for?”
Readers and community members have repeatedly cited this question as a significant force multiplier1 in their priority achievement strategy.
It’s a variation of a question I learned during my work with Seth Godin.
“What’s it for?”
But the question to ask before this question is.
“What’s my priority.”
This article explores how to dial in your priority and success path.
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The Power of Priority
The punch line is that your singular, most important, top priority isn’t about saving time or raising money. Your priority is what you would do if you had that time and money.
Some common priorities I see are.
Retire my spouse (or parents)
Clear my debts
Purchase or pay off my house
Fund my retirement (or travel dreams)
Spend more time with my family
Improve my health or fitness
Establish a legacy or cause
The Pursuit of Freedom
Over the last decade, I’ve set and achieved many priorities and helped others do the same. Our priorities share one common theme or thread.
Freedom.
The freedom to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, with whomever you want to do it with and to become the person you believe you’re capable of becoming.
Does that resonate with you?
What’s your current lifestyle priority?
Once you have a clear enough idea of your next priority, you can define the two or three things that have to happen or go right to achieve that goal (see the article linked above).
The Step Before the Step
With your priority and path clearly defined, you can now ask yourself the force multiplier question.
“What am I optimizing for?”
Ultimately, you’re optimizing to achieve your priority, of course, but the trick to collapsing time to target is to define and do the very next right thing.2
To decide and define what you need to optimize for you need to ask this question.
“What’s the step before the step?”
In other words, what’s the next most immediate limitation or constraint I need to address? What’s the next problem I need to solve? What’s the most immediate next challenge I must resolve?
Kinky Hoses & Leaky Buckets
When it comes to a priority achievement plan, most situations look like trying to fill a bucket with a kinky hose while the faucet is turned on full blast.
Your priority is to fill the bucket, and you’re optimizing for water flow, but is trying to force more water through a kinky hose an effective or efficient strategy?
Of course not.
Now, for the sake of this analogy, let’s assume that simply purchasing a new bucket and hose is too expensive or impossible. What to do?
You have to unkink the hose to increase your system’s efficiency and effectiveness. However, dedicating resources (time, attention, money, and effort) to addressing kinks in a random order is equally ineffective and inefficient.
Instead, do the right things at the right time in the right order.
First, check your bucket for leaks. It would be foolish to spend all the time and effort to completely unkink the hose only to have it leak out of the bucket.
Then, attach the hose to the faucet and turn it on just enough to identify the first kink. This focuses time, attention, and effort on the most immediate constraint which increases the flow and helps identify the next most immediate constraint.
Repeating this process will allow you to remove each kink with the least amount of wasted time, attention, and effort and you can then turn up the faucet to fill your bucket.
Asking Better Questions
But how exactly do you identify your priority achievement system’s next most immediate constraint?
Again, you must first have enough clarity about your end goal or destination , where you’re starting from, and what you’re starting with.
Then identifying and addressing the next most immediate constraint becomes a matter of asking better questions.
Here are some questions I use.
What’s worked in the past? (Optimizing a working system is usually less of a drain on resources than finding a new one or building one from scratch.)
What is the smallest move that will create the biggest improvement?
This is impossible unless _______________.
Which move has the best worst-case scenario? (In other words, which move has the least downside possibility and the most upside potential?)
The Process Is the Shortcut: Engage the Field
Our programming and conditioning compels us to look for simplistic answers to hard questions and quick fixes for complex problems. The digital domain amplifies this instinct with endless tricks, hacks, blueprints, and roadmaps.
However, our individual real-life challenges regarding priority achievement can’t be resolved with cookie-cutter solutions.
What worked for some guru in the past is unlikely to work for you now because you are not them and it is no longer the past.
What to do?
To establish your priorities and plans, you have to embrace uncertainty and navigate adversity. The only way to clarify your destination and path, earn the confidence to get there, and reduce time to target is to engage the field.
I unpack this thoroughly in this article.
But the punchline is that the process is the shortcut. Trust the process.
Onward
Want to go further with these principles so that you can achieve your life and business priorities in less time, with less effort, while experiencing greater prosperity and peace of mind as you progress?
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Love the analogy of the kinky hose and leaky bucket! It’s such a relatable way to think about optimizing our efforts.