Loud, Easy, or Fun
My best friend loves a gag gift. While nothing will top the baguette wrist rest, I did really love a mini dumpster desktop pencil holder with flame Post-its that she sent me. I have been able to give this desktop dumpster fire to so many people (apologies if they read this and realize their gift is not that unique).
The office dumpster fire is, sadly, not an anomaly. In fact, nearly every single person I’ve spoken with recently has told me that their priorities are (pick at least two): unclear / non-existent / conflicting / poorly communicated / constantly changing / too numerous to actually be acted on. Given that, it’s actually amazing how much people are getting done in spite of not being able to focus on what supposedly matters.
Last time, I made the case that you already have an operating system, whether you like it or not. Knowing how yours actually works is what makes it, and you, more effective.
Ideally, you’d plan your work and your day around your priorities. When those priorities are an unknown variable, it can look like a free-for-all. It never is. The simple truth is that everyone has a default filter for prioritization, whether they realize it or not. Before you can design a system that works (or ask AI to do that for you), you have to know how you truly operate without one.
The most common default filters I see:
What’s loud → ideally, the loudest items would be the most important, but since no one can agree on what's important, loud is often just… squeaky. It’s the work you do because of external commitments, not wanting to get yelled at, or maybe the work attached to an event or milestone that serves as a forcing mechanism for urgency. In fire-drill cultures, the fire drill becomes the default priority consistently, making it clear you’re not in a drill, just on fire.
What’s easy → the items that are easiest to check off the list either because they’re simple or you’re comfortable doing them. They may be the items that have no dependencies on others or are super fast and convenient. For those who’ve recently changed roles or expanded responsibilities, sometimes this is the “security blanket work” that you keep doing because it’s easier than letting go and tackling wholly new responsibilities.
What’s fun → these are the things you really want to do and like doing, and when a list is long, they seem to bubble to the top at the expense of cleaning out the fridge drawers or other work that you actively dislike.
I had a client who wanted to launch a newsletter for her business and every time we spoke, it was going to launch in two weeks. Over the course of several months she wrote over 20 actual articles for the newsletter and cycled through multiple logos and names, but it never went live. She found writing articles incredibly easy and had a lot of fun playing with design tools, but she had no actual reason or commitment to launch so the piece that wasn’t easy or fun kept getting kicked down the road.
Throughout that whole period, she would have told you the newsletter was one of her top priority projects, but actually getting it live kept getting delayed because there was no witness. I ended up as the witness, and I am rarely silent. Once I pointed out that “two weeks” had become 12, she launched the newsletter in a week.
Responding to what’s loud is the most natural default for frequent fixers because we’re finely attuned to triage and anything urgent or painful screams “emergency!!!” and kicks us into high gear. One client worked in a fast-moving startup where there were constant emergencies due to poor planning, so the CEO would schedule week-long quarterly planning off-sites. However, those off-sites would get derailed by all of the fire drills that came up in the week. Instead of reassessing how the off-sites were run and adjusting to prioritize the planning needed for fire prevention, the cycle continued.
The CEO saw quarterly planning and those off-sites as an outcome in themselves and didn’t build them with the goal of improving future prioritization. The end result wasn’t just a week of delayed service and projects for their customers and the organization, but that same week happening four times a year.
If you want to stop working out of a dumpster fire, you have to be honest about what work you’re prioritizing and why. If you read the above and said “yup, that’s me, I pick easy every time,” great, now you know your filter. If you’re not sure, however, here’s how to find your default filter:
Write down what you would say your priorities have been over the course of the last three months, both personally and professionally.
Below that, start a new list of what you’ve completed — either projects or consistent habits.
Compare the two and look at what is or is not getting done. The gap shows you what’s happening. The next question is why.
So if your health is a priority, but nothing you’re doing maps to it, why is that? Do you not have time for the gym? Have you been out of shape for long enough that you dread the soreness of starting? Do you just genuinely hate it even though you know it’s good for you?
Once you know your filter, the most important thing is to address everything that ends up left behind or has slipped through the cracks. The two primary ways this can happen are when whatever it is lacks:
A Home (Container) → it was never written down anywhere so it’s either forgotten forever or emerges as a poorly timed anxiety spiral.
A Way Back (Rhythm) → it was documented but there’s nothing that brings it back to the surface so unless you find the Post-it or flip back in your notebook or check the right day’s Apple Note, you might never see it again. That was the newsletter. Her Way Back was me.
A recurring review gives you a process for reviewing everything that came up in the week and planning ahead, but if you don't have a home for the stuff you dropped, you'll just find yourself attempting to vacuum up all the crumbs on the floor of your mind.
The key to all of it is knowing your filter: not so you change it, although you can certainly try, but so you build systems and solutions that support it.
I’ve given that desktop dumpster fire to a lot of people, and not one of them has asked why I thought of them. They laugh, or pass it on to someone else in the dumpster with them. Everyone knows when they’re in it, but far fewer know which filter keeps feeding it.
