What if you only did one of the things?

You have a lot going on. Your iterations are overloaded and you’re always carrying most of it into the next one. You have a lot of projects in flight that seem to drag on forever. Everything is a top priority. Nothing is getting done. The madness has to end.

You have to choose something to NOT do.

Eisenhower said, “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”

Warren Buffet suggests you make a list of the 25 most important things in your life. Focus on the top 5, and never look at the rest of the list again.

Jim Collins suggests that anything worth funding is worth funding entirely. Anything else isn’t worth funding at all.

One of the principles behind The Agile Manifesto says that “simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.”

There’s a pattern here. You can’t do it all, and you shouldn’t. The organization that succeeds doesn’t succeed because they’ve figured out how to build all of their ideas. They succeed because they’ve figured out how to say “no” to most of them.

You have 3 things that have to get done this week, but enough time for one of them. What crumbles if you don’t do the other two? Less than you think. Get the really important stuff done, the rest can be done later, or never.

Have a suggestion for the Weekly Inspection? I’d love to hear it. @johnkrewson