Recently, I had a chance to join a one-day book club. We had a conversation about what should come first at work. A typical priority matter. However, this sentence landed on my brain. “Priority should also take place in your thoughts not only actions”. I have been thinking a lot about the priority on my task list. Frankly, I have not thought about priority in my thoughts. Naturally, I asked myself what are my priority thoughts. Then, I got confused. What kind of thoughts are worth having and what are not?
I need to know my authority to set priority on my thoughts.
Many thoughts go around in one’s mind. At the same time, we only have limited time meaning we have limited capacity to have thoughts. So, having the right agenda is critical to making things work.
In addition, when you are obsessed with things that are out of your control just freaks you out. You get mad at something but you can do nothing about it. This sadly happens frequently at work.
Therefore, to put the priority on thoughts, we need to know what thoughts can be realized in the real worldunder our control and what’s not.
Bigger impact, higher priority
Things that bring a bigger impact are regarded as more important than others. So, knowing the impacts of the tasks that I have on my hand is the first step to arranging the priorities.
Knowing what’s under my control
I have limited authority in making decisions. In other words, I can only be fully involved in the results of tasks that I have the power to make decisions. Having thoughts on things that I don’t have authority over in decision-making will just reveal the chasm between the reality and the my thoughts.
Priority to the biggest Impact under my authority
Therefore, the priority on thoughts should follow the authority in decision-making. I need to find the biggest impact task within my authority in making decisions. This is a pragmatic view towards putting thoughts on my brain. If that doesn’t bring real-world value then put it away. From a differnt view, I only need to prove the real impact when I want to prove to the people that the works and thoughts that I have is important.
Still, I am confused a bit.
- Juniors do not have much responsibility for making decisions. Then, what do people expect juniors to have on their minds?
- For designers, is it worth considerig business values? Designers may or may not influence on sales, human resource, enginerring, marketing, and so on.
- Thinking how the industry and the paradigm is changing is something that is not related with making decisions. It’s rather analyzing the situations. Does this help in doing design works? If so how?