How to Identify High-Impact Tasks

I've managed 5 high-performing product marketing teams at startups and public companies, and there are 2 commonalities I've noticed at each: 1) it's easy for PMMs to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks on their plates, and 2) teams are rarely recognized for their true effort or impact by upper management. That's why I want to share my prioritization matrix 👇 It’s been a game-changer in how my teams approach projects and focus on what truly drives results. I’m curious—does this framework resonate with your approach to prioritizing tasks? Here's the concept: Rack up the wins by focusing on projects that offer high visibility and impact for lower effort and avoid those that drain your energy and don’t align with company goals. (Note: you could replace visibility with impact on this scale, but it's important that what you're working on is actually on the radar of those in upper management). Here’s how to prioritize: Quick Wins: These are the golden opportunities! High visibility, low difficulty — they bring great returns with minimal effort. Look for ways to get a few of these in your quarter. Strategic Initiatives: Aim for ONE strategic initiative per quarter. These are high-visibility, high-difficulty tasks that are aligned with your long-term goals. Go deep, plan ahead, and focus on the impact. You will be the most proud of these, but you need to be realistic about them. Routine Tasks: You’ve got to keep up with these, but don't let them consume too much of your time. Find a system to manage them efficiently. Avoid: Stay clear of high-difficulty, low-visibility tasks. These projects often don't yield the results you need, and they’re energy-draining. They don't align with your values or long-term success. 💡 Action Step: Review your current or upcoming projects. Classify them into high or low reward, and high or low effort. What projects are you spending too much time on that aren’t worth the effort? Time to realign and focus on what truly matters! #Productivity #TimeManagement #Prioritization #WorkSmart #StrategicFocus #CareerGrowth #Leadership How do you manage your / your team’s workload?

How I Stay Strategic (Not Just Reactive) as a Program Manager at Amazon Some weeks, it feels like all I do is react… Escalations Slack pings Last-minute asks… Meetings that spawn more meetings But here’s what I’ve learned at Amazon… If you don’t actively protect time for high-impact work…it disappears. Here’s how I carve out space for the work that actually moves the needle: 1/ I time-block thinking time like it’s a meeting ↳ If it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t happen ↳ No agenda…just space to think, plan, and zoom out 2/ I do a quick audit at the start of the week ↳ What work drives the most value? ↳ What can be delegated, delayed, or dropped? 3/ I define what “high-impact” actually looks like ↳ A doc that gets read by senior leadership ↳ A decision that unblocks multiple teams ↳ A fix that prevents 10 more fires 4/ I leave slack in my schedule on purpose ↳ Not every hour needs to be booked ↳ Margin = flexibility = sanity 5/ I don’t chase every fire—I triage them ↳ Some need a hose ↳ Some need a flashlight ↳ Some just need to burn out on their own Fires will always exist… But if all you do is fight them, you never build anything that prevents them. High-impact work doesn’t just require time. It requires intention. What’s one thing you do to make space for the work that actually matters?

Here’s a simple thought exercise that’ll buy you back hours of your life (and maybe make you richer). I call it the Time-Energy-Dollar Audit. Try this: 1. 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 10 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗸𝘀. (𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸, 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲, 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲.) 2. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗻𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗸. (𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆, 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵, 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲.) 𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆: Assign a color—green (energizing), yellow (neutral), red (draining). 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵: Assign a dollar value to each task. (Is it making you money? Or costing you? Or are you investing?) 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲: Estimate how long each task takes. (5 min? 2 hours? A whole day?) 3. 𝗦𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁. 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆: • High-dollar, low-time tasks (maximize these). • Low-dollar, high-time tasks (cut, delegate, automate). • Red-energy tasks that drain you (rethink or remove). 4. 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿—𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲, 𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆, 𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆? 5. 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Double down on your strengths by optimizing for energy, money, and time. Instead of going by 'urgency', identify high-value moves that align with what fuels you and gets results. Switch it up every few months. (Life changes—so should your priorities.) 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲: Say you value wealth, but you’ve been putting off depositing a check because you’re “too busy.” Depositing the check might feel like a low-energy, low-time task—but it directly aligns with your goal of building wealth. In the Time-Energy-Dollar Audit, this falls into the high-dollar, low-time quadrant, making it an easy win. Taking a few minutes to complete this task doesn’t just put money in the bank—it reinforces the habit of prioritizing actions that grow your wealth. Audit your task list, chart it out, and suddenly you see the where you’ve been wasting time. Get into your zone of genius. Less guessing, more doing. Get your time back. Follow Jonathan Z. Cohen for posts on mindset, fitness, and personal growth.

Your "to-do list" is killing your startup 👉This decision matrix saved three of my clients from burnout. After guiding hundreds of startups through critical inflection points, I've noticed a pattern: The most successful founders don't just make good decisions, 𝚝̲𝚑̲𝚎̲𝚢̲ ̲𝚖̲𝚊̲𝚔̲𝚎̲ ̲𝚝̲𝚑̲𝚎̲𝚖̲ ̲𝚒̲𝚗̲ ̲𝚝̲𝚑̲𝚎̲ ̲𝚛̲𝚒̲𝚐̲𝚑̲𝚝̲ ̲𝚜̲𝚎̲𝚚̲𝚞̲𝚎̲𝚗̲𝚌̲𝚎̲.̲ Here's the 2×2 matrix I use to prioritize decisions: 🔥 HIGH IMPACT / LOW EFFORT → Do immediately → These are your leverage points → Example: Fixing a critical UX issue blocking conversions ⏱️ HIGH IMPACT / HIGH EFFORT → Schedule deliberately → These need focused attention → Example: Rebuilding your pricing strategy ⚙️ LOW IMPACT / LOW EFFORT → Delegate or automate → These create incremental improvement → Example: Optimizing email sequences 🚫 LOW IMPACT / HIGH EFFORT → Eliminate ruthlessly → These are disguised distractions → Example: Pursuing partnerships with minimal market overlap 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙙𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝙦𝙪𝙖𝙙𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙩? The 🚫 LOW IMPACT / HIGH EFFORT zone is where founders often spend 40% of their time on activities that generate less than 5% of their results. This isn't about working less, it's about ensuring your effort goes to activities that actually move the needle. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝘆 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸. I𝘁'𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗼𝗻. What's one Low Impact/High Effort activity you could eliminate this week to reclaim your strategic advantage? ⚡ Save this → reference when planning your week Follow me for insights on navigating the startup ecosystem's unwritten rules 🚀 ♻️ Repost to help other founders work smarter, not just harder

You Can Be Busy All Day and Achieve Absolutely Nothing We’ve all been there: It’s 6:00 PM, you’re exhausted, your calendar was packed, and your inbox is empty - yet you feel like you didn't actually accomplish anything significant. This is the Paradox of Busyness. In leadership and in life, we often confuse motion with action. Motion is "doing" things: attending meetings, answering every Slack message instantly, and reorganizing your to-do list. Action is "achieving" things: finishing the strategy deck, having the difficult performance conversation, or spending quality time with family. Why we stay "busy": • It feels safe: Busy work is often easier than the high-stakes, deep-thinking work we’re avoiding. • The "Badge of Honor": Society often equates being "slammed" with being important. • Lack of Clarity: When we don't know our top priority, everything feels like a priority. The Tool: The Eisenhower Matrix To escape the trap, use the Eisenhower Matrix to categorize your tasks by Urgency and Importance. Most "busy" people spend their entire day in the bottom-left quadrant - reacting to things that are urgent to others but not important to their goals. The goal of a high-impact leader is to shift time into the top-right quadrant (Important but Not Urgent). This is where strategic thinking, relationship building, and personal growth happen. If you don't schedule time for this quadrant, the "Urgent" tasks will always swallow it up. Apply it today: 1. The Rule of 3: Before you even open your email, write down the three most impactful things you need to achieve today. 2. Audit your "Yes": Every time you say "yes" to a low-value task, you are saying "no" to a high-value goal. 3. Schedule "Deep Work": Block 60 minutes on your calendar for a "No-Fly Zone" - no meetings, no emails, just the hardest task on your plate. The Leadership Lesson: Most people spend their lives in the "Urgent" quadrants. The most effective leaders live in the "Important" quadrants. The Bottom Line: Stop measuring your success by how much you did, and start measuring it by how much you moved the needle.

Want to tackle the most impactful data projects? Use the RICE scoring model to sort them by priority! RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. It’s a useful framework to prioritize tasks and projects effectively. 1. 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵: Estimate how many people your project will affect. For example, how many teams will make decisions based on my results?     2. 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁: Estimate the potential benefit. Will this project bring significant improvements or minor enhancements? Rate it on a scale e.g., 1 to 5.     3. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲: Assess how confident you are in your estimates. High confidence boosts the project’s score, while low confidence lowers it. Be honest about your uncertainties regarding data quality and model complexity (0.0 to 1.0).     4. 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁: Calculate the time and resources required to complete the project. Measure it in person-hours or team-days. Less effort means a higher score. C͟a͟l͟c͟u͟l͟a͟t͟i͟o͟n͟ 𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) / Effort E͟x͟a͟m͟p͟l͟e͟ You will reach 50 sales managers with your model and estimate an impact of 4 out 5 on their work. You're fairly certain about achieving your goal with a rate of 0.8. It will take you about 80 hours of work to build the model. 𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 = (50 × 4 × 0.8) / 80 𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 =  2 You can compare this score of 2 versus the other project scores and select the one with the highest value. Use the RICE model to sort and prioritize your data projects. It ensures you’re focusing on high-impact tasks that require reasonable effort and have solid confidence behind them. Regularly revisit and adjust your scores as new data or insights become available. This keeps your priorities aligned with changing business goals. By applying the RICE scoring model, you’ll increase the efficiency of your project management, ensuring you’re working on what truly matters. How do you currently prioritize your data projects? ---------------- ♻️ Share if you find this post useful ➕ Follow for more daily insights on how to grow your career in the data field #dataanalytics #datascience #rice #projectmanagement #prioritization

📌 How to do Prioritization as a Product Manager. Product Managers face a problem of plenty. You have so many things to do, many problems, many solutions, and many suggestions, but are always limited by time, bandwidth, and resources. Now you need to obsessively prioritize and filter ideas before you put them in the roadmap. But how do you prioritize? The simplest yet most powerful framework that most PMs rely on is the Impact v/s Effort Framework. The impact is determined by: - Potential revenue estimate, - Customer value, - Alignment with company goals, - Demand from the market, or - Any other relevant metrics that align with product goals. Impact estimation is mostly the responsibility of the product manager. The effort is determined by: - Development complexity, - Engineering efforts, - The time required & cost, - Operations complexity, etc. Effort estimation is mostly done by the delivery teams like engineers, design, ops, etc. This is a collaborative exercise. The next step is to visualize this through an impact v/s effort matrix. Provided that the estimations are done correctly, the low efforts & high impact items are picked at the earliest, & other things are prioritized in a logical order. 📌 3 Tips to take your prioritization game to the next level: 1. Consider tradeoffs at every step: Some high efforts ideas could be of high strategic importance, similarly some low-impact ideas could be critical for customer experience. Understand the situation from all angles. 2. Look out for red flags: All ideas look high impact, or the backlog is completely filled with low effort low impact ideas. This indicates either the PM is not competent at impact estimation or is not considering enough ideas during product discovery before deciding on the best one. 3. Validate high-effort ideas by first converting them into low efforts experiments. For example: Rather than converting your whole website into all Indian languages, try to convert the most popular pages into 3 popular languages, observe the results and then decide to roll back or go all in. 📌 Other frameworks for prioritization: There will be times when you'll need more detailed frameworks to prioritize, some of the other helpful frameworks are: 1. KANO: Puts customer satisfaction at the center and distinguishes between basic expectations, performance attributes, and delighters. 2. MOSCOW: categorizes requirements into four priority levels: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have. 3. RICE: adds to more dimensions of Reach and Confidence to make Impact v/s Effort more reliable and exhaustive. ✨ Prioritization is a supercritical and useful skill for product managers, during their work, stakeholder management, and also during interviews. Do you think this would be helpful for you? I share helpful insights for product managers almost every day, consider connecting here 👉🏽 Ankit Shukla to not miss out. #productmanagement #prioritization

Leader Standard Work- it's just a fancy schedule right? What's the big deal? 🤷♀️ Leader Standard Work (LSW) might look like a schedule on the surface, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a strategic framework designed to help leaders focus on what really matters: proactive tasks that support their team, improve processes, and drive long-term success. The “big deal” is that LSW bridges the gap between leadership intentions and daily actions. It’s not just about organizing your time—it’s about aligning your efforts with organizational goals, creating consistency in your leadership, and ensuring that you’re spending your time where it delivers the most value. In other words, it’s not just about having a plan; it’s about having the right plan. It's a great tool, but like many tools, its success depends on how it’s implemented. There's a right way and a wrong way. Here's my approach: 1️⃣ Understand Current Work: Assess your routine tasks (use your calendar to help you) and categorize them into Essential, Enhance and Eliminate (That's my 3 E's framework) 2️⃣ Identify Key Activities for Your Role: Ask yourself what am I not doing that I should be doing? How often should I do these? (Here you could look at introducing time for strategic planning, Gemba Walks. 1:1 check ins with people...and all the other really important tasks that often get pushed to the side!! Feedback really helps here! 3️⃣ Create an IDEAL standard schedule. This is your vision of the way you would like to work daily, weekly and monthly- if there were no distractions! 4️⃣ Create a REALISTIC Standard Schedule: Develop a practical daily, weekly, and monthly plan that incorporates some improvements to the way you currently work, while balancing your current workload. It's probably not going to look like your ideal version so the next step is really important. 5️⃣ Create your Development Plan: Identify actions to gradually reduce distractions and time spent on activities you feel you shouldn't be doing, freeing up more time for high-impact work. This often means actively working on skills like prioritization and delegation. 6️⃣ Track, Assess and Reflect: Do this regularly to adjust as needed, and focus on consistently improving how you spend your time. Get feedback from trusted people to understand your impact. The question isn’t whether LSW works; it’s whether you’re willing to work at it! Sometimes, this is the sole focus of my leadership coaching sessions for weeks and months. It's not something we can rush. It needs to be done right! 💡Imagine everyone on your team having a #LeaderStandardWork schedule by Q1 2025 and actively working on improving it. Well, it's possible! PS I don't just teach the theory- I actively create LSW schedules with people. I work on-site with companies in Ireland and the UK to make this happen. Contact if you would like to meet up and talk it through!

Last month, I turned down 5 great projects All of them were promising And yet, I said a resounding "No" to all of them. Why? Currently, my full focus is on building a world-class operating system at notus, and thus, I must carefully prioritize my projects. If you constantly suffer from shiny object syndrome like I do, then you will understand that it’s too easy to start working on stuff with no impact. To avoid this, I started using this 3-step process to prioritize my projects. 1. Capture ideas and projects I start by creating a master list of all my current ideas and projects. When I log an idea into my project database, it includes: - Project name and description - Description of the current process (status quo) - Why this project is needed and what is the expected outcome 2. Prioritize with an Impact/Effort Matrix I evaluate each project using the Impact/Effort Matrix. Here's how it works: · Do It Quadrant (High Impact + Low Effort) I start these projects as soon as possible! They are quick hits and also contribute directly to my goals. · Plan It Quadrant (High Impact + High Effort) This is where I spend most of my time and energy. But I plan anything on this quadrant before executing. · Time Waster Quadrant (Low Impact + Low Effort) These are tasks that I deprioritize or delegate to someone else. Ideally to someone for whom they might be important. · Avoid Quadrant (Low Impact + High Effort) These are the pointless activities that distract me from my goals. Sometimes they are necessary but I try to limit my time on these as much as possible. 3. Prioritize 2-3 projects Finally, I choose 2-3 priorities based on the best impact/effort position But I don’t start working on them right away! I perform a ROI Assessment before (Return of Investment) How? This is a topic for another post! I am sure that there will be times when I won’t need this super-powerful framework to prioritize all of my work But, right now, my focus is to improve and simplify our core service, by building a world-class operating system. Therefore, projects that do not fall into this goal will receive a "No." Do you use a different prioritization system? Share it in the comments! #projectmanagement #prioritization #operations

Unlocking Focus: A Simple Framework To Prioritise The Initiatives That Matter I facilitated a workshop with the leadership team of one of my technology clients yesterday, where we focused on a critical challenge: how do we prioritise outcomes over hours to maximise effectiveness? The solution? A simple but powerful tool I've relied on for years, which I learned during my time at General Electric (GE) - the Ease/Impact Matrix. Here's why it works so brilliantly: We often gravitate toward quick wins without considering their actual value. This matrix forces the team to evaluate everything through two critical lenses: ✅ High Impact + High Ease = Quick Wins (do immediately, gain momentum) ✅ High Impact + Low Ease = Long-term Bets (worth the investment) ❌ Low Impact + Low Ease = Avoid at All Costs ❓ Low Impact + High Ease = Question Why (just because we can, should we?) By reorienting around impact, we focused on what will truly benefit their business both immediately and in the long run. Sometimes the simplest tools create the most profound shifts. What frameworks have you found most valuable for prioritisation? #OutcomesOverHours