Prioritize Your Yeses

“The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realized they couldn’t do everything.”

Kevin DeYoung

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

John Maxwell

Boy do I hate this reality. It turns out that to maximize my impact I must focus my efforts. I love learning. I am a curious fella. My curiosity knows no bounds. I love to learn. 

But, if I don’t focus my efforts to excel in the few things God created me to do, I will never reach the potential God has put inside of me. 

That is what Principle 4 of “Redeeming Your Time” is all about. Knowing what God put you on the earth to do and prioritizing your yeses to make the most of what God gave you. 

I love Raynor’s approach to prioritizing your yeses. He asks you to imagine a five-story building. We walked into this building on the first floor when we gathered up all our projects and next actions and put them into our CTS. 

Getting all of those items out of our heads, off our desks, and out of our inboxes is a huge relief. That is, until you step back, look at your list and realize you have ZERO chance of getting it all done!

Do not fret my friend. Prioritizing your yeses is how we decide what gets done and what gets left behind. 

Back to that five-story building. 

Fifth / Top Floor

The fifth floor is your mission – why you exist – why God put you on this earth. As a Christian, I was put on this earth to bring him glory. I was always a little confused on how to bring Him glory, so I define this as making God smile. That’s it. I exist to make my heavenly father smile in whatever He calls me to do. 

Fourth Floor – Callings.

Your callings are the “vital few” life areas God has called you to pursue for His glory. Discovering and narrowing down this list can be tough. The great news is that as long as you are obeying God’s commands as you work to determine your vital few callings, you can’t miss it!

Proverbs 19:21 tells us that God’s purposes will prevail. So don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis. Go where you are led and pursue excellence. Remember, less is more. The more callings you try to squeeze into life, the harder it is to be excellent at each of them. 

Narrowing down my list is probably the most painful process I’ve ever gone through. I want to do so many things, but God keeps showing me I can’t and have to give up another “good” thing for the few “great” things He has called me to. Your vocational calling will be where your Passions, Capabilities, and Profitability overlap. Raynor’s book “Master of One” is a great tool to help you through the discovery process. “Unique Ability” by Catherine Nomura lays out an excellent process that I am working through now. As believers, our job is to keep searching, keep trimming and continue to pursue excellence in whatever work God has given to us. 

Third Floor – Long-Term Goals

In Jim Collins’ vernacular, these are Big Hairy Audacious Goals, also known as BHAGS. These are supposed to be epic and a big stretch of your capabilities. Make these so big and inspiring that you know you cannot pull them off without God’s help. 

Keep your BHAGS focused on the “vital few” callings you defined on the fourth floor. 

Second Floor – Quarterly Goals

Raynor uses OKRs, which stand for Objectives and Key Results. OKRs were made famous by Google because they used them to become Google (no small feat). Countless other companies have leveraged the power of OKRs to achieve great things. Billionaire investor John Doer feels so strongly about the power of OKRs he wrote the book “Measure What Matters” about them and created a website dedicated to helping people implement OKRs that gives away a ton of great, free advice and tools. You can find it at www.whatmatters.com.

Start your OKR journey by reading chapter four of “Redeeming Your Time” and dive into John Doer’s work if you want to go deeper. 

First Floor – Projects and Next Actions

Now, with your answers to floors five through two in front of you, take another look at your projects and next actions. Which projects and next actions will get you closer to your OKRs? You will also have plenty of “must do” tasks that have nothing to do with your OKRs but simply must be done. Leave both of these in the “this quarter” section of your CTS. Put everything else in a separate area so you rarely look at them until the next quarter comes up and you go through the process again. 

Basement – Posteriorities

This is my favorite floor of the building! This is where you lock away all the things that don’t get you closer to your goals. They could be great things, but they are not your greatest things. If you are a people pleaser, saying no to these things will be brutal. For me, seeing the items that I know I should say no to in my “basement” encourages me every time I need to say no to something that would not help me reach the goals that God gave me to do. 

Life is short. Eternity is forever. We must figure out what God wants us to do while on this planet and get after it.

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