Everything is priority one

It starts honestly. A new thing arrives, and it matters. The next day another thing arrives, and it also matters. After a week every row on the list is marked priority one, and the list has stopped meaning anything.

Labelling something top priority was a way to feel like the day had a centre. Once everything wears the label, the centre is gone.

Order is the fix, not a better label

The way out is to put the items in a sequence and let the sequence do the work the labels were pretending to do. Position one matters more than position two. Position two matters more than position three. The numbering is the decision; the label was a way to avoid making one.

And it is honest in a way the label never was. Everything really is a priority. The useful question was never whether something matters. It is how much it matters next to the thing beside it.

What changes when the list is ordered

• Adding a new thing asks where it lands, not whether it matters.
• Putting one thing up means something else moves down, and everyone can see which.
• The argument shrinks from is this important to is this more important than the thing beside it, which is a much smaller question.

Draw a line

An ordered list of forty things is still forty things. So draw a line. Above it is what the team is actually doing this week. Below it is everything else, still recorded, still ordered, waiting its turn. Five is a good place to start the line, and the right number is whatever your team can genuinely carry.

The complaint everything is priority one is not a complaint about the work. It is a complaint about a tool that lets you dodge the decision.