In our professional and personal lives, all decisions we make or actions we undertake are not equal. There are some activities which have much more significant implications. Doing these activities regularly gives us compounded returns. In other words, there is more impact for the same effort over the long run. Funnily, it’s precisely these important decisions or actions thatusually get postponed the most. This article is not going to tell you how to ensure that your critical work gets done first. We’ll address that in a future article. This article addresses a more basic problem. The problem that we are often unable to accurately identify critical activities and decisions. We often miss the forest for the trees. We don’t know which activities are critical and are going to give us significant returns. This article helps you identify those critical activities or decisions. The ones that can have significant consequences.
One of the reasons we struggle to identify critical activitiesis that our brains are wired to be lazy. We are attracted to easy tasks. This is a legacy of our cavemen days. Where being thrifty with our energy utilization could mean the difference between life and death in times of scarcity. Our brain consumes a lot of calories. While it’s only about 2% of our body weight, its responsible for nearly 20% of our energy consumption. Although mentally challenging activities use only marginally more calories, it’s enough for the brain to prefer simple tasks. So, we procrastinate the difficult tasks till we really need to do it. Often, its just the perception of difficulty that makes our brain divert us to other activities. It might be the easiest of activities, which just requires a wee bit of thinking before we start it.
Even if a critical activity is not mentally challenging, we often put it off for another time. That because performing the critical activity could cause us emotional distress. And we don’t want to take that ‘stress’ when we are in a positive or good mood.For instance, we always hesitate before giving negative feedback. Our brain would rather avoid dealing with the stress caused by the reaction of the person receiving the feedback. That’s why we so often avoid or postpone giving feedback to our colleagues.
Risk aversion is another way our bodies resist stress. It drives the fear that something bad might happen out of the decisions and actions we take today. So why risk it? Inaction is easier than facing the consequences of action. We try to postpone difficult activities. Whether it’s a difficult negotiation, an activity which could make a significant difference or a decision on which your company’ future hinges. We assume that they will be easier in the future. Our brain might even prepare a detailed justification for why it’s better to make the decision in the future. However, it is worth noting that no ostrich ever evaded danger by putting her head in the sand. It doesn’t work here either.
So, how do we identify that an activity is critical? Here are 6 indicators that something may be critical and that you need to act on it.
1. You lose sleep over it
If something sticks in your head, its likely its important. It’s likely, but not necessary. As a thumb rule, if you find yourself mulling over something several times, it indicates that you need to do some thinking or take some action. It’s possible that you find that it’s not so critical after all. In that case, you’ve at least removed it from your brain space. One less thing to worry about! And if it is critical, you’ve identified it as critical. That’s the first step towardstaking action.
2. It relates to your business growth
Anything with a directly attributable to positive or negative impact on your business growth needs to be actioned now. Whether it’s meeting a potential customer, incentivizing your sales team or fine-tuning your go-to-market strategy, you need to act now! Action doesn’t necessarily mean completing the entire initiative at one go. It’s taking that one step which brings you closer to completing the initiative.
3. It relates to customer or employee satisfaction
If it’s something which impacts customer or employee satisfaction, its important. And needs to be dealt with appropriately and in a timely manner. There’s nothing better than keeping your eyes open to identify these activities. After all,only if your employees are satisfiedwill they be able to make your customers happy.
4. It has lots of moving parts
Most important and critical activities seem daunting because they have lots of moving parts. With the thought itself, we feel overwhelmed at the task. So, if the path seems difficult, it’s a good sign that it’s worth going down that path. Anybody can do the easy stuff and gain nothing. If you want to learn and grow, it’s the difficult things which need doing. The temptation when a certain undertaking gets difficult is to ignore it or procrastinate. Or find easier things to do. Don’t give in to that temptation. Rather try breaking down the task into smaller segments which require a smaller time commitment and are doable.
5. Its unfamiliar
Things with which we are familiar are easy to do. We know what to do and how to do it. And after completing that easy do to we have the satisfaction of we accomplished something. Yet, as Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” If something seems unfamiliar, try doing it. That said, keep checking on the utility of trying the unfamiliar. All unfamiliar things are not necessarily good. But when they are worthwhile, the returns you get are super-normal.
6. You feel incompetent to do it
A feeling of incompetence is good- it means future growth and learning. All real growth is accompanied by a feeling of incompetence somewhere along the way. So, if you’re not doing something because you feel incompetent, the best way to overcome the feeling is by starting it.Once you start doing it, you’ll gain confidence. And once you’re done, try moving on to something else where you feel incompetent.
Closing thoughts
Identifying critical activities is sometimes simply a matter of keeping your eyes open. Don’t let your brain store away some critical activities in deep recesses. And once identified, couple with action and you’re on your way to a more focused and successful life.
Unrelated thought
For those who think that thinking hard can help them lose weight, think again! Thinking hard burns up to 50 more calories per day. So, you could probably add that sugar into your coffee with a little less guilt. But not much more than that!
