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warikoo Wanderings

The art of prioritization

Published about 1 year ago • 4 min read

Back in 2014, I used to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn.
Not looking for a job.
Instead, reading.
Back then I felt it had a really high quality curation of articles and thoughts around leadership, management, performance, and so on.
And one day, I came across an article that changed my thinking about prioritisation.
Simple, yet immensely powerful.

Let me ask you a question.
You have two tasks in front of you.
Both equally important. High-value tasks.
How do you prioritise?

Most of us struggle with this, right?
It may be easy to prioritise between a task that is important and one that is not. But it is really hard to choose between two important tasks.

Here is what the article said.

Ask yourself - where do you have a higher chance of succeeding?
And then devote yourself to the task that has a lower chance of succeeding!
Sounds counter intuitive, but this is the truth.

You see, the task is high value, it is important, it is critical.
But if it has a low probability of success, THAT IS WHERE you have to personally spend your time.
That is your focus.
To make sure you win.
Because without your efforts, your presence, your involvement, you may not win!

So what do we do to the other task? That has a higher probability of success?
We 'delegate' it.
But I am not a manager, Ankur. I do not have a team to delegate to.
Doesn't matter - delegate it to a tool, to a friend, to a process.

Let us understand this through an example.
Say you are a working professional and you have 2 tasks in front of you.
Task 1: Help your colleague deliver something that is critical for you, to be done on time.
Task 2: Prepare a report for your manager, on the current trends of an industry.

Both look equally important to you.
So you ask the question - which has a higher probability of success?

If your colleague doesn't deliver on time - it will show badly on you, because your represent your team.
And it looks like the colleague is struggling.
The chances of success seem low.

On the other hand, your manager actually likes you. Trusts you.
And you are quite well versed with the industry you have to create a report on.
The chances of success seem high here.

So here is what you do.
You spend most of your time with your colleague, making sure they do not fail. Thus ensuring you do not fail.
And you 'delegate' the report.
Delegate to whom? You don't have a team.
As I said, delegate it to a tool, a friend, a process.
Use ChatGPT to do it for you, because you know you are likely to succeed there.
Ask a colleague for a favor - to just run the query there and you can quickly make the report later on.
Pull up your previous reports and just update the numbers.
Anything that requires less time and effort and still gets the work done.

Here is the simple graph for you to visualise the approach


This simple graph has had such a big impact on my prioritisation technique, that I cannot overemphasise its importance.
Try it out and see for yourself the power of it!

All the best :))


The more things you have, the less important everything becomes.

📕 Book I'm reading this week

Finished reading Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution by Robert Chesnut.
A great book for all founders and managers out there - how to make sure you are creating a workplace that is ethical.

Did not pick up a new book. Chilling :))


🤳 HOW TO INSTAGRAM - India's most comprehensive Instagram Creator School

After launching 'How to YouTube' which already has 10,000+ students, we are now launching a 8-week LIVE course specifically for Instagram.

Here my team and I will share all the tactics that helped us grow from nothing to 1M followers in 18 months and grow to 2M followers in another 12 months!

30 students will be selected for the course and be given a 100% scholarship (no fees) for this course.


If you've never tried anything new, you're probably afraid of failure.

🗣️ Response to last week's question

Hahaha - this is funny and sad at the same time!
Notice how, as you grow old, you start thinking you are mostly not funny.
Most people are ok-ok-funny when young, and then slowly slowly the funniness starts reducing. Life becomes a drag and we think we have become 'boring'.
Love this observation!

My answer:
I think I am ok ok funny. I can't crack jokes to save my life, but I can crack jokes to make people have a good time :)


🙋🏻‍♂️ Question of the week

How fit are you?

  • Very fit - I like my body and mind
  • Decently fit - can be better
  • Not so fit - but not so bad either
  • Not fit at all
  • Don't want to answer


If you value your own opinions, you’re already free.

📸 Picture of the week

I didn't make it to IIT, despite 2 attempts.
They felt sorry and decided to call me to their cultural fest instead.
Sweet of them :)))

Here, with the IIT Delhi Rendezvous Organizing Team, right before my session!


🎙️ Podcast I shared this week


🚀 Content I shared this week

📹 YouTube:

10 Predictions for 2050

📱 Instagram:

If you died

🐥 Twitter:

Request to teachers - please incorporate ChatGPT into your teaching


You can, of course, always write to me by simply replying to this newsletter.

I love reading all your emails, even though I may not be able to reply to them all.
Yes! I READ ALL MY EMAILS. ALL OF THEM.
(Bina bhujiya ke poha jitna boring hota hai, uski kasam)

You can view all previous newsletters here.

warikoo Wanderings

by Ankur Warikoo

Entrepreneur, Author, Content Creator with 9M+ followers across platforms. I share this newsletter every Friday around personal growth, books, quotes, pictures - it is the most personal version of me online.

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