June 11, 2025 • 12 mins
We use the term ‘Prioritize and Execute’ at the shop all the time. It’s from Jocko’s Laws of Combat. Find the priority and execute. Once complete, there’s a new priority. Then you handle that.
This is the antidote for overwhelm.
It’s easy to get bogged down with the big picture of getting everything done. You can't do it all at once. Take a step back to detach. That'll help you find the next step you need to take.
This can be applied to all aspects of life. When you're feeling overwhelmed, detach, identify the priority, and run the play. Before you know it, you'll be moving forward. Forward movement generates momentum. Now you're off to the races.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Feel like I've talked about this somewhat recently is
if you've read any of Jockowillinks books, you might have
heard the phrase prioritize andexecute. And this is something
that's top of mind for me. Wetalk about it at the shop all
the time. I talk about it to myteam, especially when they're
feeling overwhelmed, like a lotof times, I'll constantly see
(00:22):
these things happening, becauseour print queue will get out of
control. The shipping, you know,stuff, there's a lot of orders
to ship, and I'll see my teammembers get overwhelmed. And
I'll just remind them, you know,prioritize and execute. Find the
the highest priority task, getit done, and then the priority
will shift to another task, thenyou get that done. And so I've
(00:45):
been thinking about that a lot,because I've been saying it a
lot. We got real busy. We hadsome people out of town and some
things happening at the shop, sothe people that were handling
the printing, and then I waseven handling the printing,
which I haven't done for quite awhile. And so this concept was
really, you know, really, again,top of mind. I like to repeat
(01:08):
these anyway. So I was alsothinking about it and trying to
make sure I apply that to mylife as well. And so I've been,
I've been in this rut, like, nota bad rut, but like, in this
sort of mode where I'm sort offorcing myself to get the shit
done that I need to get done.And when I'm when I'm not in a
(01:31):
rut, I don't have to do I don'thave to force myself to do
anything. I actually have toforce myself to stop working
when, when I'm in that mode, Iseem to be either in one or the
other. It's never, kind of likea nice little middle ground. I'm
either, like full work mode orfull kind of like in a rut. And
(01:51):
my ruts nowadays are way, myNot, not nearly as bad as they
used to. Because, like, therewas a time in my life where,
like, I could just take days andnot do any work, like,
especially when I was doingmotion graphics, there was times
where, like, you know, if I hada deadline that was two weeks
away and that was the only job Ihad, I could put off the work
(02:14):
all the way up until, like, thelast day or two, and just get it
all done. And so I could fuckoff a whole bunch of time I
don't have that. I don't want toeven call it a luxury, because I
don't think that's good, goodfor me. But I don't have that
option anymore, like the work,work has to get done every
single day for me to keep movingforward. So when I'm in these
(02:36):
kind of modes where I'm kind ofstruggling to get myself to move
it's, it's hard to get out of.And I've talked about this a
bunch as far as, like, buildingup momentum and all that. And
it's about, you know, gettingstarted and picking small things
and all that stuff. But wherethe prioritize and execute came
in was, I took some time tothink about, I'm like, All
(02:58):
right, well, what, what? Whatwould be the priority to get
myself out of the rut? And sowhen you really look honestly at
your life and the shit thatyou're doing, it's probably
pretty, I don't know if it'seasy, but it's definitely
possible to find things thatmaybe you weren't looking at. So
like, if I'm in a rut now, whereit's like, every day I wake up,
(03:21):
you know, write my power listout, and then I'll have to force
myself to get that work done.What is it? What is it that's
happening in my life that mightbe the priority in order to get
myself back to where when I seethe list, I'm pretty much
automatically going to attackthe list and not have to force
(03:41):
myself to do anything. And Istarted thinking that it might
be more along the lines of, youknow, exercise and shit like
that, because everybody knowslike exercise. If you exercise
regularly, you have more energy.And so if you have more energy,
obviously you have more energyto put towards the tasks that
(04:03):
you have to get done. So Istarted thinking about it. And
I've always been on this sort ofroller coaster with with
exercise like I'll do, I'll do75 hard be all gung ho about it.
245 minute workouts. Do all theshit, gallon of water, diet, all
that shit. And then when it'scoming to the to an end, you
(04:24):
know, I'll have all thismomentum, and I'll be like, Oh,
hell yeah. And I won't even belooking forward to it ending.
I'll be like, looking forwardto, like, getting that win of
finishing the 75 days. But atthe same time, I'm not like, Oh,
I can't wait to not do this shitanymore. It's always like, cool,
when I get to the end, I'llstill do, you know, all of these
things, but maybe not 245 minuteworkouts, one outside maybe, you
(04:48):
know, still work out every day,and then over time that starts
to sort of like, go away. Youknow, it's like, over time, I'm
like, All right, I'll just do145 minute workout, and then
I've. Essentially, it's like,man, yeah, 30 minutes is enough,
and then maybe I don't have towork out every day, and then it
just kind of spirals into, youknow, sort of inaction,
(05:11):
essentially, and and so I'llstill work out, but it'll just
be a lot more infrequent, a lotmore, you know, sort of sporadic
and not really very well plannedout and all these kind of
things. And so when I wasthinking about prioritize and
execute and how to get back ontrack, to get myself moving
(05:33):
every day and working out andstuff, Jesse just got home, and
I think the dogs are gonna freakout, but I don't wanna stop
recording, so I'm going to keepgoing. I apologize if there's a
bunch of noise in the back. Soin order to get myself back into
consistent exercise, I starteddoing this thing. So that's the
priority I identified. That'sthe priority, right? Obviously,
(05:56):
I have to get my work done. Butlike, as far as like, what am I
going to really focus on to makesure I get this shit together.
And so I like the sort of tinyhabits, habits, or atomic habits
strategy. It's like pickingsomething small and getting that
consistency down. So I walk bydog in the morning, every
(06:17):
morning, and now that's a habit.So I started carrying a 35 pound
kettlebell with me, so, well,that's not like a shit, shit
load of weight, you know, overlike 1015, minutes, you know,
you're switching hands it. Itadds a little bit of intensity.
So I have that habit now, and Ido that every single day. And my
(06:39):
dog, which is kind of cool, mydog holds me accountable,
because every morning, when weget up, she's all excited
because she knows that's what'sgoing to happen. So I sort of
have to do that. And then theonly real sort of discipline
that I have to exercise, in myopinion, is, you know, not
(07:00):
saying fuck it. I'm not going tocarry the kettlebell, so I have
to have some willpower to belike, All right, I'm going to
pick up the kettlebell and,excuse me, and then we're just
going to do this. So that habitof doing that every day, you
know that's that's a little bitof exercise. It's not like that
(07:21):
much. And then I tied anotherhabit to that, which is I'm
going to do a, like, a fewminutes of exercise after that
when I get home. And so Istarted doing my my walk with
the dog, with the kettlebell,and then when I when I get home,
I'll do it like, what's calledan E, M, O, M, or Imam, or
(07:44):
whatever, every minute on theminute. And then I'd have
different exercises. So, youknow, push ups 10, push ups
every minute on the minute, or,I think I was doing 12 to 13 or
something like that, for one.And then maybe the next day I'll
do like, you know, bent overrows with the kettlebell or
something like that. So Istarted gaining some momentum
(08:07):
and getting that done. And thenI realized I'm like, you know, I
really need to do more. And so Istarted doing the sort of
rebuild thing. I kind of likepieced together a bunch of
different things. I did anepisode on this a while back,
but it was a program that I puttogether for myself that was
(08:28):
pieced together from a bunch ofother programs of stuff that
works for me. It's basicallylike 10 pages of reading, 10
minutes of meditation, 30minutes of exercise, five
powerless tasks, and follow adiet, you know. So those things
move the needle for me. So Ijust started doing that a couple
(08:50):
days or I'm on think, I thinkI'm on day three now, so I'm
doing 3030, minutes of exercise.So anyway, I'm kind of getting
in the weeds with all this shit.I'll put a link in the
description if you want to checkthat out. I think it's really
good, and I find it reallyhelpful. So as far as the idea
of prioritize and execute, I'llgive you some examples on how we
(09:13):
use it at the shop. So like whenthey're looking at the print
queue and everything is,
you know, they're reallyoverwhelmed. It's real easy
prioritize and execute. We gotto prioritize the jobs that are
due the soonest, get those done,get those out the door, and then
when something fucks up, thatmay become the priority, because
(09:35):
it's like, maybe there's a jobthat's due today and then one
sheet didn't cut right now, thatbecomes the priority to make
sure we get that done so that wecan get it out. And it's the
same thing with the shipping.Shipping is real, not saying the
shipping job is easy. I mean,it's simple, but it's, you know,
it's taxing, but, you know, theoldest orders go out first.
(09:58):
That's the priority. So. It'swhen you're looking at the queue
and people are gettingoverwhelmed, and they're like,
oh, there's 75 orders. There's100 orders in the queue. How am
I going to get it all done?Well, don't think about how
you're going to get it all done.Just think about getting that
oldest order out, and then thenext one, the next oldest one,
and so just keep finding thatpriority and executing on it,
(10:23):
and then the next priority popsup. And so in life, that also
happens. So like, if you'resuper stressed out, you could
use prioritize and execute tofind kind of the nagging thing
that you're putting off. Like weall have those things where you
know, you're something you hatedoing, like me, filing some kind
(10:46):
of paperwork or something,especially if it's like a
government type of thing, Ifucking hate doing that shit. I
don't want to go onto thiswebsite that's a pain in the ass
to navigate and all these kindof things. But putting off those
kind of tasks definitely add alot to your stress, and the more
you put off, the more of thosetasks you have, the more they're
just sort of living in yourmind. And so those become the
(11:09):
priorities. So it's like, what'sthe most nagging task that I
have right now? I don't knowwhat it is. I haven't thought
about it, but if you're askingyourself that you find the one
that's like, what? What am Iputting off the most? What's the
one that's been, you know, on mymind for, like, three weeks or
whatever, then maybe that's thepriority priority. And you get
(11:32):
that done, and then you move onto the next one. So it's a
really simple concept, but I'mtrying to just make sure I kind
of keep that top of mind so thatI can make sure I'm I'm sort of
utilizing that in all aspects ofmy life. So if you find yourself
in a rut and you're havingtrouble moving forward or
(11:53):
getting yourself to moveforward, what's the priority?
And that's different foreverybody. So just try to figure
out a way to look, look hard,and figure out what that
priority is, execute on it, andthen move on to the next one.
And then that whole concept ofmomentum will start to just kick
in, you know, and then you'llget yourself out of it pretty
quickly. So anyway, sorry Ihaven't been recording these
(12:15):
like, I don't know. I'm trying,trying to get better, but I
really appreciate all you guys,if you like the show and you
feel any it's valuable, wouldappreciate if you shared it, and
even if you don't, if you justlisten, I appreciate that too.
All right, I'll see you guyssoon. Thank you.
(12:40):
All right, appreciate each andevery one of you guys who are
supporting the cause andcontinue to spread the love and
yeah, stay up.
Feel like I've talked about this somewhat recently is
if you've read any of Jockowillinks books, you might have
heard the phrase prioritize andexecute. And this is something
that's top of mind for me. Wetalk about it at the shop all
the time. I talk about it to myteam, especially when they're
feeling overwhelmed, like a lotof times, I'll constantly see
(00:22):
these things happening, becauseour print queue will get out of
control. The shipping, you know,stuff, there's a lot of orders
to ship, and I'll see my teammembers get overwhelmed. And
I'll just remind them, you know,prioritize and execute. Find the
the highest priority task, getit done, and then the priority
will shift to another task, thenyou get that done. And so I've
(00:45):
been thinking about that a lot,because I've been saying it a
lot. We got real busy. We hadsome people out of town and some
things happening at the shop, sothe people that were handling
the printing, and then I waseven handling the printing,
which I haven't done for quite awhile. And so this concept was
really, you know, really, again,top of mind. I like to repeat
(01:08):
these anyway. So I was alsothinking about it and trying to
make sure I apply that to mylife as well. And so I've been,
I've been in this rut, like, nota bad rut, but like, in this
sort of mode where I'm sort offorcing myself to get the shit
done that I need to get done.And when I'm when I'm not in a
(01:31):
rut, I don't have to do I don'thave to force myself to do
anything. I actually have toforce myself to stop working
when, when I'm in that mode, Iseem to be either in one or the
other. It's never, kind of likea nice little middle ground. I'm
either, like full work mode orfull kind of like in a rut. And
(01:51):
my ruts nowadays are way, myNot, not nearly as bad as they
used to. Because, like, therewas a time in my life where,
like, I could just take days andnot do any work, like,
especially when I was doingmotion graphics, there was times
where, like, you know, if I hada deadline that was two weeks
away and that was the only job Ihad, I could put off the work
(02:14):
all the way up until, like, thelast day or two, and just get it
all done. And so I could fuckoff a whole bunch of time I
don't have that. I don't want toeven call it a luxury, because I
don't think that's good, goodfor me. But I don't have that
option anymore, like the work,work has to get done every
single day for me to keep movingforward. So when I'm in these
(02:36):
kind of modes where I'm kind ofstruggling to get myself to move
it's, it's hard to get out of.And I've talked about this a
bunch as far as, like, buildingup momentum and all that. And
it's about, you know, gettingstarted and picking small things
and all that stuff. But wherethe prioritize and execute came
in was, I took some time tothink about, I'm like, All
(02:58):
right, well, what, what? Whatwould be the priority to get
myself out of the rut? And sowhen you really look honestly at
your life and the shit thatyou're doing, it's probably
pretty, I don't know if it'seasy, but it's definitely
possible to find things thatmaybe you weren't looking at. So
like, if I'm in a rut now, whereit's like, every day I wake up,
(03:21):
you know, write my power listout, and then I'll have to force
myself to get that work done.What is it? What is it that's
happening in my life that mightbe the priority in order to get
myself back to where when I seethe list, I'm pretty much
automatically going to attackthe list and not have to force
(03:41):
myself to do anything. And Istarted thinking that it might
be more along the lines of, youknow, exercise and shit like
that, because everybody knowslike exercise. If you exercise
regularly, you have more energy.And so if you have more energy,
obviously you have more energyto put towards the tasks that
(04:03):
you have to get done. So Istarted thinking about it. And
I've always been on this sort ofroller coaster with with
exercise like I'll do, I'll do75 hard be all gung ho about it.
245 minute workouts. Do all theshit, gallon of water, diet, all
that shit. And then when it'scoming to the to an end, you
(04:24):
know, I'll have all thismomentum, and I'll be like, Oh,
hell yeah. And I won't even belooking forward to it ending.
I'll be like, looking forwardto, like, getting that win of
finishing the 75 days. But atthe same time, I'm not like, Oh,
I can't wait to not do this shitanymore. It's always like, cool,
when I get to the end, I'llstill do, you know, all of these
things, but maybe not 245 minuteworkouts, one outside maybe, you
(04:48):
know, still work out every day,and then over time that starts
to sort of like, go away. Youknow, it's like, over time, I'm
like, All right, I'll just do145 minute workout, and then
I've. Essentially, it's like,man, yeah, 30 minutes is enough,
and then maybe I don't have towork out every day, and then it
just kind of spirals into, youknow, sort of inaction,
(05:11):
essentially, and and so I'llstill work out, but it'll just
be a lot more infrequent, a lotmore, you know, sort of sporadic
and not really very well plannedout and all these kind of
things. And so when I wasthinking about prioritize and
execute and how to get back ontrack, to get myself moving
(05:33):
every day and working out andstuff, Jesse just got home, and
I think the dogs are gonna freakout, but I don't wanna stop
recording, so I'm going to keepgoing. I apologize if there's a
bunch of noise in the back. Soin order to get myself back into
consistent exercise, I starteddoing this thing. So that's the
priority I identified. That'sthe priority, right? Obviously,
(05:56):
I have to get my work done. Butlike, as far as like, what am I
going to really focus on to makesure I get this shit together.
And so I like the sort of tinyhabits, habits, or atomic habits
strategy. It's like pickingsomething small and getting that
consistency down. So I walk bydog in the morning, every
(06:17):
morning, and now that's a habit.So I started carrying a 35 pound
kettlebell with me, so, well,that's not like a shit, shit
load of weight, you know, overlike 1015, minutes, you know,
you're switching hands it. Itadds a little bit of intensity.
So I have that habit now, and Ido that every single day. And my
(06:39):
dog, which is kind of cool, mydog holds me accountable,
because every morning, when weget up, she's all excited
because she knows that's what'sgoing to happen. So I sort of
have to do that. And then theonly real sort of discipline
that I have to exercise, in myopinion, is, you know, not
(07:00):
saying fuck it. I'm not going tocarry the kettlebell, so I have
to have some willpower to belike, All right, I'm going to
pick up the kettlebell and,excuse me, and then we're just
going to do this. So that habitof doing that every day, you
know that's that's a little bitof exercise. It's not like that
(07:21):
much. And then I tied anotherhabit to that, which is I'm
going to do a, like, a fewminutes of exercise after that
when I get home. And so Istarted doing my my walk with
the dog, with the kettlebell,and then when I when I get home,
I'll do it like, what's calledan E, M, O, M, or Imam, or
(07:44):
whatever, every minute on theminute. And then I'd have
different exercises. So, youknow, push ups 10, push ups
every minute on the minute, or,I think I was doing 12 to 13 or
something like that, for one.And then maybe the next day I'll
do like, you know, bent overrows with the kettlebell or
something like that. So Istarted gaining some momentum
(08:07):
and getting that done. And thenI realized I'm like, you know, I
really need to do more. And so Istarted doing the sort of
rebuild thing. I kind of likepieced together a bunch of
different things. I did anepisode on this a while back,
but it was a program that I puttogether for myself that was
(08:28):
pieced together from a bunch ofother programs of stuff that
works for me. It's basicallylike 10 pages of reading, 10
minutes of meditation, 30minutes of exercise, five
powerless tasks, and follow adiet, you know. So those things
move the needle for me. So Ijust started doing that a couple
(08:50):
days or I'm on think, I thinkI'm on day three now, so I'm
doing 3030, minutes of exercise.So anyway, I'm kind of getting
in the weeds with all this shit.I'll put a link in the
description if you want to checkthat out. I think it's really
good, and I find it reallyhelpful. So as far as the idea
of prioritize and execute, I'llgive you some examples on how we
(09:13):
use it at the shop. So like whenthey're looking at the print
queue and everything is,
you know, they're reallyoverwhelmed. It's real easy
prioritize and execute. We gotto prioritize the jobs that are
due the soonest, get those done,get those out the door, and then
when something fucks up, thatmay become the priority, because
(09:35):
it's like, maybe there's a jobthat's due today and then one
sheet didn't cut right now, thatbecomes the priority to make
sure we get that done so that wecan get it out. And it's the
same thing with the shipping.Shipping is real, not saying the
shipping job is easy. I mean,it's simple, but it's, you know,
it's taxing, but, you know, theoldest orders go out first.
(09:58):
That's the priority. So. It'swhen you're looking at the queue
and people are gettingoverwhelmed, and they're like,
oh, there's 75 orders. There's100 orders in the queue. How am
I going to get it all done?Well, don't think about how
you're going to get it all done.Just think about getting that
oldest order out, and then thenext one, the next oldest one,
and so just keep finding thatpriority and executing on it,
(10:23):
and then the next priority popsup. And so in life, that also
happens. So like, if you'resuper stressed out, you could
use prioritize and execute tofind kind of the nagging thing
that you're putting off. Like weall have those things where you
know, you're something you hatedoing, like me, filing some kind
(10:46):
of paperwork or something,especially if it's like a
government type of thing, Ifucking hate doing that shit. I
don't want to go onto thiswebsite that's a pain in the ass
to navigate and all these kindof things. But putting off those
kind of tasks definitely add alot to your stress, and the more
you put off, the more of thosetasks you have, the more they're
just sort of living in yourmind. And so those become the
(11:09):
priorities. So it's like, what'sthe most nagging task that I
have right now? I don't knowwhat it is. I haven't thought
about it, but if you're askingyourself that you find the one
that's like, what? What am Iputting off the most? What's the
one that's been, you know, on mymind for, like, three weeks or
whatever, then maybe that's thepriority priority. And you get
(11:32):
that done, and then you move onto the next one. So it's a
really simple concept, but I'mtrying to just make sure I kind
of keep that top of mind so thatI can make sure I'm I'm sort of
utilizing that in all aspects ofmy life. So if you find yourself
in a rut and you're havingtrouble moving forward or
(11:53):
getting yourself to moveforward, what's the priority?
And that's different foreverybody. So just try to figure
out a way to look, look hard,and figure out what that
priority is, execute on it, andthen move on to the next one.
And then that whole concept ofmomentum will start to just kick
in, you know, and then you'llget yourself out of it pretty
quickly. So anyway, sorry Ihaven't been recording these
(12:15):
like, I don't know. I'm trying,trying to get better, but I
really appreciate all you guys,if you like the show and you
feel any it's valuable, wouldappreciate if you shared it, and
even if you don't, if you justlisten, I appreciate that too.
All right, I'll see you guyssoon. Thank you.
(12:40):
All right, appreciate each andevery one of you guys who are
supporting the cause andcontinue to spread the love and
yeah, stay up.
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