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How to prioritize what matters and live a sane life

Aug 9, 2025

Most things we deal with everyday are just noise.

It’s important to separate the signal from the noise. Signals are what brings the value.

Noise are what drains your energy and drives you crazy.

Therefore it’s important to prioritize things by cutting the noise and picking the signals.

Few proven ways to do it:

✨️ MoSCoW method

  • M stands for must do
  • S stands for should do
  • C stands for could do
  • W stands for will/would do

Really good for plannings tasks and projects, clearly separates which task are indespensable and which tasks can wait.

✨️ 80/20 rule (Pareto principle)

80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts.

Identify that 20%. Helps you be productive, not busy.

✨️ The 25/5 Rule

Famously used by Warren Buffet.

Got too many things on the plate?

List the top 25 things/tasks.

Pick the first 5, ignore everything else.

Learn to say no to things that don’t contribute to the goal

✨️ ABCDE technique

A - Must get done today, serious consequenses of not done

B - Should be done soon, less serious consequences

C - Nice to do, no consequences if not done

D - Delegate (Can be done by another person, doesn’t need your attention)

E - Eliminate (no value at all)

To this at the start of the day, focus on A and B.

✨️ Constraint elimination

  • Find the first road block
  • Fix it (eliminate it)
  • Proceed
  • Repeat, find the next road block

Use when progress is blocked and everyone in the team is runnign around to fix it, yet no result.

✨️ Kanban

Simple visualization of thing to do, things in progress and things done.

Keep check on tasks in progress to reduce context switching.

Review and rebalance.

💥 Few more techniques to manage personal time:

✨️ 2-minute rule

  1. Notice a quick task
  2. Takes less than 2 minutes?
  3. Do it immediately

✨️ Eat the frog

  1. Find the most challenging task of the day
  2. Do it first thing in thr morning
  3. Repeat this every morning

✨️ Pomodoro technique:

  1. Pick a task
  2. Give it continuous attention for 25 minutes
  3. Take 5 minutes break
  4. Again 25 minutes attention, repeat 4 times
  5. Take a longer break

✨️ Getting things done

  1. Write down the task
  2. Is it actionable?
  3. Organize into right category or list
  4. Review periodically, has the right priority and expectations
  5. Engage, execute