Day three. Priorities. Or you could think of it as triage. That's a great word. I learned that word while studying to be an EMT 27 years ago. Triage is what you do when you have multiple patients at the same time, all needing care from you. Which one gets treatment first?
The most critically injured patient gets treatment first, right? Well, not always. Sometimes a patient is so critically injured, that they will die no matter what you do because the injury may be beyond your skill, the hospital may be too far, the damage too great, or the cost of treating this patient will cost you the lives of others. Applied to your leadership (and mine), sometimes we have to let a patient (or project or task or relationship) die, in order to save the other 12 people who need attention.
Once we have determined what we need to let go of and release it from our sphere of responsibility, then we need to prioritize the remaining tasks (patients) in order of severity or urgency. In our leadership model or working model, this means that I read my RSS feeds before I do email. Seth Godin points out that answering or responding to something someone thought yesterday, is less important than creating something important or wonderful today.
The point being that I can only experience frustration in the long run if I am unwilling or unable to tackle the most necessary first, rather than the easiest or what I like to do best.
