Ruthless Prioritization - Get Out of a Rut, Make Your Dreams Come True
Being in a flow state is transcendent. Energy feels endless, creativity knows no bounds, and ideas are coming faster than you can do anything with them.
Suddenly, something interrupts that flow; an emergency pops up and you’re drawn away. You’ve been sucked into travel that comes at an inconvenient time. Resolve Studio crashes for the fifteenth time and you need to wait for your support request to be answered (Blackmagic Design please answer my emails). Or, maybe its the end of Christmas break and you spent the last three days in a food coma.
Whatever it was, you’re now in a rut. Doing anything feels debilitating; you know you need to take action, but feel overwhelmed by possibilities or uncertain where to start.
To get out of this mental gridlock, I use a three step process: brainstorm, prioritize, focus. No need for a cold shower, Pomodoro blocks, dopamine detoxes, or a 5 am wakeup time (let’s be honest, you need more sleep anyway). Just a task list and a calendar.
Step 1: Brainstorm
Write down absolutely everything you can think of doing, from small tasks like taking out the trash to big tasks like applying to med school. Be boundless. Don't filter or judge your ideas at this stage. Include:
Personal tasks (laundry, groceries, exercise)
Work projects (presentations, reports, meetings)
Creative endeavors (writing, filming, editing)
Long-term goals (travel plans, skill development, career moves)
Maintenance items (home repairs, equipment updates, software updates)
Don't worry about feasibility, timing, or importance yet; that comes later. Think of this as a brain dump where no idea is too big or too small. You’ll struggle to think of the first few, but before you know it, the ideas won’t stop coming.
Step 2: Prioritize
Take your task list and plot them on three axes; ease, impact, and timeliness. Timeliness is easy, its whether or not a task has a deadline.
For impact and ease, use this to grading scale to help figure out where in the 3D productivity space it lands.
How Hard or Easy It Is to Do
Extremely Hard
Requires significant time, expertise, or resources; feels overwhelming to start. Examples: Learning a completely new skill like coding, climbing a challenging new grade, composing a symphony.
Very Hard
Demands lots of preparation, effort, or mental energy. Examples: Editing a full video project or tackling a long, complex work task, studying for the SATs.
Hard
Challenging but manageable with proper effort. May take hours or multiple sessions to complete. Examples: Planning a shotlist, putting together IKEA furniture without the instructions, having a difficult conversation.
Moderately Hard
Requires some effort or setup but is doable within a focused work session. Examples: Writing a draft, learning a new song, planning a backpacking route.
Neutral
Balanced in difficulty; straightforward but still requires some energy or attention. Examples: Organizing gear for a trip or revising a project outline.
Somewhat Easy
Slightly easier than neutral; requires less focus or energy. Examples: Doing a review, scheduling meetings, cleaning your desk.
Easy
Simple and doesn't take much time or effort. Examples: Sending emails or uploading files.
Very Easy
Quick and painless; can be done with minimal thought. Examples: Sending a text, updating software, picking up supplies.
Extremely Easy
Takes just seconds to minutes, requiring no planning or real effort. Examples: Setting an alarm or making a small edit.
Effortless
So simple it almost feels automatic. Examples: Clicking publish on a ready-to-go project.
Impact can be hard to define precisely. Impact on what? For this axis, I use a simple question: How much will this task help make my dreams a reality?
How Impactful It Is on Making Your Dreams Come True
No Impact
Does nothing to move you closer to your goals. Examples: Scrolling social media, organizing your desk alphabetically, updating software, busywork.
Very Low Impact
Marginally related to your goals but hardly matters. Examples: Organizing old files or minor aesthetic adjustments, watching company meetings.
Low Impact
Some relevance but minimal effect overall. Examples: Attending a meeting with no clear outcome.
Moderately Low Impact
Slight contribution, but mostly peripheral. Examples: Checking off routine tasks or doing minor practice.
Neutral
Adds value but isn't game-changing. Examples: Taking a mid-level course or completing a single project task.
Moderate Impact
Provides a noticeable step forward. Examples: Collaborating on a project or training to build a skill (with clear intention of using it).
Significant Impact
Clearly accelerates progress toward your goals. Examples: Finishing a major film edit, achieving a climbing milestone, finishing a pitch deck.
High Impact
Brings you substantially closer to a dream or major goal. Examples: Completing a video for submission to a festival, establishing an important connection.
Very High Impact
A critical move that creates opportunities or solves key problems. Examples: Signing with a sponsor, raising funding for your startup, finishing a career-defining piece of work.
Life-Changing Impact
A breakthrough that fundamentally alters your trajectory. Only you know what these are in your life.
Step 3: Focus
Focus is not about doing as many things as possible; Its about doing the right things. Focus is not about being busy; it’s about being purposeful.
Using our prioritization, we can find the right focus. Otherwise, we may get stuck doing a million easy things that are easy to do, but not what we really should be doing. Or, we could get tunnel visioned on doing something hard when there is low hanging fruit just above us.
Be ruthless in cutting through the noise; after all, it's your dreams at stake.
Do Priority 1: Urgent Tasks - High Timeliness, Medium to High Impact
Some things simply need to be done because of timing. For example, signing up for an event before it's too late, booking a flight, or attending an important one-time event. In these cases, your hand is forced; these are the number one priority since it's now or never.
Do Priority 2: Morale Boosters - High Impact, High Ease
This is the most obvious category, get those easy wins.
For example, publishing a fully edited video that's ready to go is both high impact (it directly contributes to your goals) and very easy (it just requires clicking a button). Other examples might include sending out a draft to friends to get reviewed, submitting an application that’s nearly, or accepting an opportunity that aligns with your goals.
You won't find many of these tasks on your list. Since they're so obvious, you've likely done them already. However, finding even one quick win can build momentum and energize you to tackle more challenging tasks.
Breakdown Priority 3: Dream-makers - High Impact, High Difficulty
These tasks will make your dreams come true, but are not easy to do. They usually are one of three things;
lofty, poorly scoped goals
I want to make a futuristic, abstract bouldering film that redefines climbing as a performance art!
technically difficult
I want to learn how to play the Stairway to Heaven guitar solo!
toil
I need to animate a stop motion scene for the Boston Marathon :(
In this case, a daunting task is too difficult to start. You need to break it down into manageable pieces. Break down the problem into the individual tasks you need to do and start the process over.
Do not plan out an entire project here. Be comfortable leaving things unplanned; focus on the first three small, immediate things you can do.
Take Note of Priority 4: Spot Fixes, Chores, Investments: High Ease, Medium Impact
These are things that really shouldn’t be in your agenda as they are not very high impact, but can pay dividends in the long run. If they’re easy to do, you should do them when convenient. For example, organizing Notion folders; no need to set time aside to do it, but if you know you want to do it and you’re already in Notion, taking one minute to do it may be useful.
This category can also be used to get a quick win to feel a sense of achievement to get out of a rut. When you have no Morale Boosters, these are also good starting task to get going.
If you find you have a lot of these, you can also group them up together and timebox them into a single task; see how many you can get done in a short amount of time.
Be wary of getting lost; spot fixes only work if there are few. Otherwise, you will find yourself firefighting.
Cull Priority 5: Fake Urgency - Low impact, High Timeliness
A deadline can give the illusion of importance. To combat this, we need to evaluate whether or not the task truly matters.
Examples are: filling out a survey, browsing a sale, investing time in collaborations you’re not excited about, applying to a job you wouldn’t take, etc.
This should only be done if there is nothing better to do (spoiler, there’s always something better to do).
Cull Priority 6: Illusions of Productivity - Medium Impact, Medium Difficulty
This is the most insidious category.
We know what our dreams are and have an idea of what work we need to do to achieve them. However, we often busy ourselves with tasks that look like work—checking emails, experimenting with fancy new tools or apps, and (most deceptively) watching training or educational videos. We do work that looks similar to what we should actually be doing, but in reality is an easier, watered-down version. These activities create a mirage of productivity but generate little momentum toward our actual goals. What makes these tasks particularly dangerous is that they provide a false sense of accomplishment, just enough to keep us comfortable without tackling more meaningful work. Months later, we find ourselves with nothing to show for, despite how “busy” we were.
I’m guilty of this myself. I’ll clean my camera lenses just to feel like a filmmaker. I’ll re-rack my climbing gear just to feel like climber. I can even justify scrolling on Instagram under the guise of “research” or “inspiration”. Ironically, even drafting this reflection might be another illusion of productivity (I should probably be editing right now).
The truth is, no amount of email checking, organizing, or motivational podcast listening is going to achieve our goals. These activities aren’t inherently bad, but they’re not work, and must not be prioritized as such. Recognizing this distinction is crucial: these tasks are supporting acts, not the main event. As much as I’d love to watch my tenth 30-minute YouTube video about color grading, I really should just open DaVinci Resolve and learn by doing, even if it means stumbling through the process.
Cull Priority 7: Dogma - Low Impact, High Difficulty
In software, many engineers have strongly held opinions about things that don’t matter. We call these bikesheds. For example, 100% unit test coverage, code style, reliability metrics. I once worked on a team that spent weeks trying to improve our reliability scores. At the end of it, all we had was a mediocre product that reliably disappointed.
Is the task at hand solving an actual problem? Or are you simply adhering to a dogmatic principle, one ingrained as a rule of thumb rather than thoughtfully applied as a solution tailored to your project?
It may seem obvious to not do low impact high difficulty work. The challenge here identifying work as such. Go back through your list and find any misclassifications.
Bonus Thoughts
I will always clean my workspace before I do anything. Until my working area is clean, I will not do anything on my task list. The generous way to frame this is that its a ritual that helps me get into a productive mindset. It may help you to find a ritual of your own before commencing work.
If you follow the grading scale, most of your tasks will be easier than you originally thought.
The ideal time for Illusions of Productivity is while you’re riding the subway.
This is how you organize your work, not your life. A life lived without room for spontaneity, where every action is carefully calculated, is bleak. This is the essence of “FOCUS”: we only have so much time to invest into working on our passions, so we must be ruthless about using it wisely.
The creative act of being aware and present, internalizing the world, and subconsciously transforming it into an artistic statement can not and never will be “work”. The act of living is a creative act itself (Rick Rubin). Therefore, this framework does not apply to that process. That is a good thing; you need no inspiration for these steps to work. Creativity is the enemy (Tom Sachs). This framework is solely mean for execution.
Perfect is the enemy of great, and great artists are the ones who ship. Go out and do!
