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“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”
Peter Drucker
I’ve lost more chess games to the clock than to bad moves.
Each player gets 3 minutes in a game of blitz chess. I used to find good moves and run out of time hunting for better ones.
Hundreds of losses taught me to play good moves instead of waiting for perfect ones.
Last week I sat down for two and a half hours of deep work and spent all of it ranking my to-do list.
The time block ran out before I started the top item. Some items on my list were still unranked.
Planning felt productive.
This was before I separated planning from execution.
What you work on counts far more than how hard you work. Out of a hundred things on a list, the top one can outweigh the rest of the list combined.
Finding it takes real work.
People credit Abraham Lincoln with a saying in defense of preparing first.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Sam Hinkie spent three seasons building an NBA team to win later. He took over the Philadelphia 76ers in 2013 and collected draft picks and young players while the team lost.
In 2014 he drafted Joel Embiid. Injuries kept Embiid off the court for the next two seasons.
Hinkie’s teams won 47 games in those three seasons.
In April 2016 the owners moved to hire Bryan Colangelo to run basketball decisions. Hinkie resigned instead.
His resignation letter made the same case: “In the short term, investing in that sort of innovation often doesn’t look like much progress, if any.”
In 2018 Embiid led the 76ers to 52 wins and the playoffs.
Yaron Weitzman tells the story in Tanking to the Top.
Since planning is valuable, I give it a short session before deep work.
Deep work is only for doing, so planning can’t pass for progress.
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What’s the top item you could start before ranking the rest?
