My three guaranteed hacks to prioritizing the important stuff in your life
Anecdotes of my distractions - and the wins
For events this week —> check out our calendar
If your day to day looks anything like mine used to, it's probably a chaotic collection of tasks, ideas, nice-to-haves, and “maybe someday” projects that keep piling up. It's easy to feel productive while staying busy, but busy doesn’t mean impactful. That’s why I want to share the three hacks that transformed how I approach my time, focus, and energy. These are the exact steps I use to ruthlessly prioritize what actually moves the needle in my life. I can personally testify that they’ve worked for me. Hope they can do some good in your life too.
1. Limit Yourself to Your Top Three Priorities
At the start of each week, I ask myself: What are the three most important things this week that will actually matter this month?
Not 10. Not 7. Just three.
Before, I used to walk into each week and work on stuff on a whim. If I felt like doing something, I would do it. Unfortunately, this was a terrible strategy because I would get easily distracted and hop from thing to thing…then nothing got done.
Limiting yourself to three priorities doesn’t mean you’ll ignore the rest, it means you’re being intentional about where your energy goes. Whether it’s creating content, organizing community activities, or making new business connections, if it doesn’t land in the top three, it can wait.
Choosing only three things forces clarity. And clarity is a huge part of the journey towards momentum.
2. Break Down What You Think You Need to Do
Most of the time, what overwhelms us isn’t the work, it’s the fog around the work. We avoid starting because we’re not clear on what “start” even means.
I used to get so stressed with content because, in my head, I had to think of ideas, film/write, schedule, etc…I overestimated what actually needed to get done. Try this for yourself with your next project/initiative. Size it up. Wrap your head around next steps.
When you see the work clearly, you stop procrastinating out of fear. You stop guessing, and you start doing.
3. Create Margin for Buffer, Error, and Life
Here’s the truth: something will go wrong. You’ll need to get a chore down. You’ll forget a social outing and need to attend. You’ll need to go grocery shopping. Life happens, but we rarely plan for it.
And that’s ok.
When you overschedule or overcommit, even a small hiccup can throw everything into chaos.
That’s why I leave 20-30% of my calendar open. You’ll actually be more efficient in the long run, sustainable too. This race is a long game, not a sprint.
Margin gives you breathing room. It gives you time to think, adjust, recover. That space is often where some of the best productivity happens, the spontaneous phone call, the creative breakthrough, the unexpected opportunity.
There it is - three prioritization hacks that I still use to this day. It might take some time to get used to but I promise that focusing on the few (over doing a bunch of different stuff at the same time) will help you drive optimal impact in your life.
I mean, that’s what we all want after all right? My high school English teachers are dying that I just introduced a new idea in the conclusion. Yikes, sorry Ms.Doyle
Let me know what you’re wrestling to prioritize these days and I’ll give you my two cents (if you want). I read every reply!
Excited for you,
Daniel