Priority

If you only listen to one final episode of Priority this week, make it this one! Eighteen months after taking to the digital airwaves, the Priority team finishes the podcast with an appropriate topic: how does one actually finish a big project? Max revisits strategies he has shared previously: committing specific blocks of time to work, focusing on only a few must-do projects, and taking advantage of random moods and inspirations to “finish things on a whim.” Caitie, meanwhile, considers her relationship to her work—finding the part of the project she can’t stop thinking about, paying attention to how long things actually take, and being kind to herself along the way. How will it all end? Will our hosts triumph over evil (or at least over self-derailing jokes and asides)? Join them one more time to find out!

We now join our episode synopsis, already in progress! Picking up where they left off last week, the Priority team discusses work in process. What do you do with your unfinished projects? The spectrum of management strategies runs the gamut from the Gantt chart to the stack of papers on your desk, and our hosts have explored all points in between. Caitie shares a cautionary tale about a treasure trove of half-formed ideas she once lost, and comes to the vaguely Buddhist conclusion that—important or not—unfinished work is fragile and impermanent. Max shares strategies he has seen work (including ones he candidly admits he doesn’t implement well). Ultimately, we learn to minimize work in process when we can, contain and secure it when we can’t, and to never, ever, include the word “Final” in a file name.

Can a preliminary sketch still be considered “art?” (Given how little editing Max does some weeks, our hosts hope so!) An exhibition of unfinished works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art inspires this episode’s topic: rough drafts. Caitie reminds us to appreciate our drafts, or even our rough-around-the-edges finished projects; a rough approximation is sometimes the best we can do and helps get us to something better. Max, meanwhile, points out that everything is a draft—even the most polished product represents where the creator stopped working, not some Platonic ideal of what it could be. From Kanye West to Harper Lee, and from Kevin Smith’s Clerks to refugee scientists’ unfinished studies, the Priority team contemplates and celebrates the imperfect and incomplete. These works which may be stepping stones to something better, but in any case are better than nothing.

How bad could it be? This week on Priority, our hosts explore the worst things that never happened! Caitie, in town to work an intense short-term contract, joins Max to discuss how depleted she feels. There’s just one hitch—she actually doesn’t feel half bad! Despite being good at managing her energy and boundaries, Caitie reflects on how often she overestimates how taxing a busy schedule or challenging conversation will be. Max wonders if the key is a loss of perspective, and recounts how he recently caught himself preparing for battles that only existed in his head. Humans turn out to be surprisingly bad at affective forecasting, or predicting how we will feel in the future. The Priority team doesn’t arrive at a solution, except to remind us to lighten up: it might not be as bad as we expect.

Where does the time go? The week, forty-five minutes of Priority’s time went into discussing Laura Vanderkam’s “The Busy Person’s Lies” and 168 Hours. She believes we have more time—and less work—than we think we do. Put your torches and pitchforks down, folks—as we will discover, Vanderkam knows of what she speaks, having studied the research literature and many individuals’ time logs. This inspires a lively discussion of various time-tracking schemes our hosts have attempted. Caitie reports a healthy balance of work and sleep. Max—a new dad—seems a little, well, less balanced. Caitie suggests that the secret may be to “get salaried, but think hourly.” In other words, get as much control as you can over your own time, but spend it as though it were still finite and measured—because ultimately, it is.

Toast. Tired. Beat. Exhausted. Under the weather. Over it. This week on Priority, Max asks an important question: how do you do your best work when you feel less than your best? What happens to your productivity when you are not firing on all cylinders? With an eight-week-old baby under his roof, it’s little wonder he’s struggling with these very issues right now. Caitie—no stranger to wearing multiple plates and keeping a lot of hats spinning—stresses the importance of good self-care. Getting enough (or at least more) rest, eating right, and even minimizing little annoyances all make a difference. Whether you’re burning the candle at both ends out of necessity, or just because you like fire, tune in this week for great tips on making the most of your work when you have the least to offer!

How would you rate your memory? If you said better than average, try this: can you recall that story Max told during our last episode—about the mommy blogger who made a reader so mad that they reported the blogger to Child Protective Services? If you find yourself nodding along, check your memory—that story got cut before you heard the episode! You are in good company, though. Max did the same thing when he recounted it without checking his sources (as it turns out, the incident never happened). The week on Priority, Caitie and Max explore memory, and its many failings. Our memories trick us, degrade, vanish, and sometimes spontaneously form from whole cloth. The only way out is a paradox: every strategy to improve our recall, from calendars to journals to photographs, involves not relying on memory itself.

Max is a new dad! Caitie is a new aunt! Priority has a new episode! One month ago, Max and Kourtney welcomed their son, Owen, into the world. Thanks to the experience of becoming a parent, Max now understands things about life and love that only another parent can appreciate. Kidding: this is not that kind of show. Max is actually pretty down on that kind of parental self-importance, but he does now understand a few things better than he did before. He’s rapidly becoming an expert on sleep deprivation, time constraints, and dirty diapers. This week on Priority, Caitie picks her co-host’s brain about life and work in a post-baby world, and tries to tackle some very real issues: what happens to work in the face of a newborn? How did he brace for change? And just how do you pronounce “aunt?”

Do you feel like you've been literally buried alive in business metaphors? Just missed your black belt in martial arts-inspired jargon? In the second half of their review of The 5 Choices: The Path to Extraordinary Productivity, Max and Caitie explore the book's sage advice for managing schedules, technology, and energy. Caitie critiques the authors' varied imagery—the "gravel" of trivial tasks and notifications, or the Samurai-like "swordlessness" of one who avoids dependence on a particular tool. Max places The 5 Choices into its historical context, and suggests that the book even works as "GTD Light" for those who find David Allen's Getting Things Done overwhelming. The book’s sleazy antagonist, Carl, returns in these latter pages, too. The authors promise that their advice can handle him, but the Priority hosts don’t believe in leaving things to chance. Their takeaway? Carl must be stopped, at any cost.

This week, the Priority team presents the first half of its review of The 5 Choices: The Path to Extraordinary Productivity. Caitie takes issue with the books’ hypothetical antagonist, Carl the office creep. Max feels slightly skeptical when authors Kory Kogon, Adam Merrill, and Leena Rinne claim this book isn’t about managing time. Worse, he picks a fight with the entire Internet over the productivity legacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Still, our hosts can get behind The 5 Choices' actual focus: managing decisions, attention, and energy. And Caitie definitely appreciates the book's realistic standards: “extraordinary” goals, for instance, are a personal benchmark, not someone else's ideal. Will Carl finally be sent to the HR class on hostile work environments? Will Ike bomb Max back to the Stone Age? There are only five ways to find out...

Caitie reaches a milestone, receiving her first set of professionally-printed business cards. This inspires a lively discussion about the parameters and purposes of business cards, and the culture of capital "n" Networking. Our hosts contemplate the place of these scraps of paper in our digital age. Caitie reflects on a past experience in which a card received helped a brief encounter at a conference grow into a meaningful exchange of ideas. Max, meanwhile, recommends only accepting a business card if you know why you want it—either to support a clear, short-term engagement, or to add its subject to a well-maintained system of contacts (which he keeps calling a “Rolodex,” despite that fact that even he isn’t old enough to have ever used one). Here’s our card—let’s do lunch sometime! Or, better still: just listen to the episode.

Elon Musk. Jack Dorsey. Marissa Mayer. How do these high-flying tech CEOs get so much done? Media profiles tally their super-clever strategies for making it work, but the Priority team asks a more basic question: are they even getting that much done? The research paints a bleak picture. Each hour over 40 provides diminishing returns, each hour over 65 provides no additional return, and at 80 hours, even highly-trained medical residents make crazy errors. Max observes that successful CEOs have something at their disposal that most of us mere mortals lack—namely, gobs of money. But among the trite (non-wealth-related) advice on offer, Jack Dorsey provides a clue about how a two-company CEO—or Max, or Caitie, or YOU—can make it all work. And what is that? Don’t fret, our hosts promise they’ll get to it before hour 40.

Hakuna matata! Priority starts its second year with a trip to Orlando, Florida! In the tradition that stretches back to Episode No. 1, the Priority team takes a quarterly break from work and productivity issues to discuss a cultural artifact. This time, though, they’ve picked a doozy: the Walt Disney World resort, in Orlando, FL. It’s not all dark rides and roller coasters, though—between losing track of which Little Mermaid-themed attraction is which and waxing nostalgic about their childhood visits, our intrepid hosts manage to shoehorn in a few weightier topics. What role do fantasy and illusion play in our lives? What lessons can the mother of all theme parks teach us mere mortals about our work? And, perhaps most importantly, which is better—a Mickey Mouse-shaped ice cream bar, or a Mickey Mouse-shape Rice Krispie treat?

What would you do if a great opportunity fell into your lap today? If you’re Max, you might grab a towel and some club soda, and hope it doesn’t stain your pants. He points out that we often fail to recognize opportunities when they appear. Meanwhile, Caitie would take that opportunity and run with it. While her co-host worries over the limits of our ability to seize opportunities, she is actively taking advantage of one. She recounts the changes she has made to her schedule and infrastructure in order to take it on. One thing our hosts agree upon: like the weekly “once in a lifetime!” sale at the furniture store, opportunities don’t last forever (and unlike that sale, they won’t always come around again). But you know what they say: “When opportunity knocks, God opens a window.”

You wouldn’t know it from the release schedule, but Priority went on a six-week recording hiatus. Caitie traveled the Gulf Coast. Max did, well, whatever he does—until last week, when our intrepid hosts met up with other family in Orlando for a belated Christmas. This week, the Priority team resumes work and school (and podcasting), and lead us on a guided tour of their reentry. There will always be friction when we return to our jobs or projects after a long break, but the amount of friction has more to do with how well we leave our work than what we do when we’re away. Moreover, any time away from “real life” also offers us an opportunity to reflect. And that’s a lesson anyone can learn and apply, even without an expensive plane ticket and a mojito.

This week, Priority hits the road! Caitie likes to devote the proper time and space to travel. Just getting from point A to point B is plenty for one day, even without the TSA patting down one’s hair for explosives. Max agrees, and shares his favorite way to take control of travel days: packing lightly. He may not He may not have the freedom of, say, Jack Reacher (who packs only a wallet and toothbrush), but he feels liberated flying with nothing but a single backpack. The Priority team muses on the broader implications of this kind of lightness—could packing lightly, and the affordances of a clean hotel suite, suggest patterns applicable to the rest of life and work? If not, Caitie and Max can at least agree they are both happy when they manage to avoid packing more than they can chew. Wait…

How awesome are you? How awesome do you think you are? And how much does the difference matter? This week, Priority turns its attention to confidence. Max feels secure enough to point out that confidence is born of success, which in turn is often born of luck. But he’s not self-assured enough to discount such mere feelings of confidence. The confident, after all, are the ones who will have the courage to say “Yes!” when opportunity rings the doorbell. Meanwhile, Caitie boldly asserts that this kind of hope is valuable, whether grounded in our true abilities or not. She also shares some physiological hacks that can increase your feelings of confidence. Whether you feel brave or meek today, the Priority team is confident that this episode can help!

Priority gets a case of the Mondays! In Max's mind, Mondays couldn't be much worse. Caitie points out that Mondays can help set the pace for the week (for better or for worse, as we sometimes spend rest of the week overcoming Monday). But if a week is a useful unit of time for planning and thinking about our work, Mondays are surely due some consideration. Want better Mondays? The Priority team may not have all the answers, but they start the week bright and early to working on the questions.

Productivity nerds and laypeople alike hold deep skepticism towards New Year's Resolutions. They feel a little arbitrary, a little corny. What’s so special about January 1st? Maybe December 31st isn’t the moment to reimagine your entire life. You’re still going to be you the next morning (or, perhaps, you’ll turn into you-with-a-hangover). But if there is a little motivational magic to be had, why not go for it? This week, Caitie recounts silly goals of New Years past. Meanwhile, Max suggests that reflecting on the year just past might be the most valuable part of resolution-making—both to celebrate, and ground your future plans in reality. As usual, a focus on why we’re doing anything—including naming our goals each New Year’s Eve—may help keep us on track. If nothing else, resolve this year to keep listening to Priority.

If you've ever caught yourself planning your next remark while you should be listening to someone else . . . you might be a human. This week, listen deeply as our hosts explore a skill we often take for granted. Caitie suggests that emotional and physiological barriers can keep us from listening well. Max berates so-called active listening and critiques the state of the art in listening advice. But whatever the quality or quantity of our training in listening skills, the Priority team can’t escape the conclusion that hearing each other out matters. Because, well . . . we all want to be understood, right?

The podcast is alive with the sound of music this week! Max reveals some catchy singles he's worn out worse than his recurring jokes, and Caitie yells at people who think it's inappropriate for her to listen to Christmas music out of season. But the team covers more than their own tastes and hang-ups this week, too. Familiar favorites or instrumental music can help us concentrate on challenging work. Lively beats and clever hooks pump us up. Our songs become the soundtrack of our lives, triggering memories and expressing what we can’t easily express ourselves. Music isn’t just background noise, or even merely entertainment—music colors our lives and shapes our work, sometimes in surprising ways. So, whether your jam is Taylor Swift or the Baroque masters, add Priority to your playlist today.

We’ve all heard the same advice about how to tackle a big project: break it down into smaller, manageable tasks. But hearing the advice isn’t the same as taking it—or pacing yourself as you work through those milestones. This time on Priority, Caitie and Max wonder about the mysterious phenomenon of being early. Sure, maybe it's more mysterious for Caitie, who struggles to trick her brain into working ahead. Max shares experiences ranging from caffeine-infused all-nighters to working three weeks ahead of schedule. The team hypothesizes conditions that make it possible to get done early, arrive early, or even just feel prepared. And perhaps paying attention to that feeling is what makes the difference. Feeling in control doesn't mean the work does itself, but it sure beats the freaked-out, adrenaline-soaked feeling of the last-minute crunch.

If you've been at a task too long, you might feel like you're going cross-eyed. This week, the Priority team wonders about benefits and strategies for gaining distance from our work. Wait—don't run away! Caitie suggests that a healthy change in perspective or a break might be just what an intense situation needs. Max makes the distinction between pushing forward in a grind versus riding a wave. Caitie agrees: dwelling in a task without moving is a sign it's time to shake things up. How can you maintain a healthy distance from the things you're closest to? Join us as our hosts wander around a while to find out!

From your resume’s “objective statement” to your afternoon snacking plans, having a sense of the purpose of your activities goes a long way. How well does a given option move you towards where you want to go? The Priority team gets purposeful this week, suggesting that asking the big "Why?" question can reveal guideposts to navigate options. Caitie and Max find that a clear purpose can help us better connect with others and communicate the relevance of our work, though Max points out that some purposes don’t dictate which path to them is the best one. Our work won't always align with any single goal, but one big picture in the mind's eye may be worth two in the bush. Tune in to find out . . . why.

No cats were harmed in the making of this episode as the team gets topic-curious about . . . curiosity! After a break from recording, Caitie and Max are back it, trying to make sense of a complicated impulse. Caitie suggests curiosity is a position from which you can make better observations and connections. Max cautions, though, that it shouldn't be so celebrated at the expense of focus. Psychologists have long considered the role "openness to experience" plays in personality, and that's a good thing: a little open-mindedness will go a long way as the team tries to figure out what's worth being into (and what's not).

Is it too early in the year to talk about Christmas music? Does Caitie care whether it's early? Will Max let her be the grumpy one this week?! All is still merry and bright this time on Priority, as the team takes its quarterly sidestep to consider a work from popular culture. The Mannheim Steamroller album Christmas created a new sound in a style driven by traditional tunes. In their analysis, Caitie insists on recognizing the deep roots and modern spirit of Christmas as a cultural experience, and Max reflects on the significance of memories made around these holiday classics. Composer Chip Davis started something special when this album hit stores in 1984. Queue it up now with the Priority team to get into the spirit . . . even if it is a little early.

If life's a game, then maybe it's time to level up the productivity. This week on Priority, the team explores ways to "gamify" your work. Tools, apps, and tricks abound in this week's discussion on gamification--and the key principles that motivate us to play anything that feels like a game. Caitie reflects on using rewards as motivation, and the precarious balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Max considers how the social elements of gamification create competition, solidarity, and accountability. Or not. Everyone's a winner when we game well. You just have to make sure you know what you're playing (and who wants you to play it).

No matter what type of work you do, you may be called upon to capture and demonstrate productivity. How's your output? How's the quality of your work? What targets have you met? But perhaps more importantly, who is painting those targets? And how? Caitie may not understand how targets work, but despite that, the Priority team tackles personal metrics. Max suggests that identifying the right measurement can be hard, and the audience matters (after all, what gets measured gets done). Caitie agrees, and stresses that the measurements chosen should reflect and communicate your values. Ultimately, the right metrics can help you tell the right stories to the right people. Just be sure you know what you want to do with that data once you have it.

We all know what a trash can is for. It's for this podcast. *Self-zing!* But truly, the trash can is a model organizational tool because its function is clear. Piles and jumbles on the other hand. These things require decisions. No matter your relationship to your stuff, this week on Priority, the team tries to make sense of it all. Caitie gets stuck in trash can land, wondering how clear her organization would be if every space was so clearly defined. Max suggests there should be a place for everything (important), and everything (important) in its place. Does the way you organize your work reflect its value? Let the Priority team inspire you to find ways to make your workspace work for you.

As autumn deepens and The Holidays draw near, Caitie contemplates the place of seasons in our lives, plans, and—yes—decorating sprees. Being Midwesterners, the Priority team is all too familiar with the turning of the seasons. But seasons aren’t just, in the words of Marcus Buckingham, “The PowerPoint version of the weather.” It seems for everything, as the Byrds put it, there is a season—baseball season, the school year, a television season, tax season. But seasons do more than provide external cues to mark our time. They also remind us to make plans in units bigger than a day, week, or even month. The season is a framework for thinking about the big projects and themes of our lives. So grab your Pumpkin Spice Latte and pull up a chair, dear listeners: the Priority Season is upon us!

Talk about task lists? Easy: check! Creating and accomplishing to do list items is simple enough when they're clear, but what about those fuzzy ones that languish in task list purgatory? The Priority team is making some lists and checking them twice this week, and trying to figure out what works. Caitie is haunted by items floating to the bottom of her list, but also shares how she leans on her calendar, and how it reflects relationship between her tasks and her time. Max talks about a few functions his lists serve, including the issue of committing to an action: if it gets put on the list, it's real. What do we learn this week? That these are habits of mind that have to be developed (hence, you know, habits. Can we wrap this summary with a satisfying "check"? Check!

After last week's suggestion that the robots are indeed coming, the Priority team considers them more broadly: what does increasing automation mean for our work? Caitie embraces automation: Google Calendar, systematic emails, and prompts that keep her world in order. But Max suggests that his long-hand project management isn't tedious, per se, by comparison. Maybe it's more thoughtful, forcing him to slow down when he considers his work. So the robots have their perks and limitations, but the team wonders whether and how automation might stymie growth. If we don't have to pay attention to certain skills, what will happen to them? And our jobs? Okay, so the robots are already here, but perhaps we can figure out how to live in peace with these not-so-futuristic friends.​

Who do you work for? It seems like a simple question, but it sparks an Amazon-sized debate this week on Priority. Caitie and Max discuss recent news detailing the intense, workaholic culture at the tech giant, but wonder about implications for the rest of us. Who sets the expectations—and tone—in your workplace? Caitie questions the payoff of a breakneck working life. Sure, she could spend a 40-hour week responding to work that her student took ten minutes to write, but to what end? The Priority team ponders what drives this type of culture, and whether it is sustainable. But Max also wonders whether we even have an option, as humans start to lose the race with ever-improving technology. His advice? Watch your back, dear listeners: the robots are coming.

If our individual time and attention are precious resources, then how much more valuable—and fragile—are our shared time and attention? The answer is "very," and nothing despoils those resources like a bad meeting. Caitie tells a story of teleconferences past (equal part cautionary tale and productivity nightmare), and makes some real-life meeting plans. Meanwhile, Max supplies his usual mix of project management thinking, silly hacks, and David Allen quotes. In his talk, “Bad Meetings (and How You’ll Fix Them),” Merlin Mann compares running a meeting to driving a bus: somebody has to keep their eyes on the road. But what if you're in someone else's out-of-control meeting? Should you throw a shoe at the driver? Tune in as the Priority team tries to get their meetings—and figurative language—under control.

To write, or to type? To take minutes, or make lists? The Priority team talks note-taking this week! Caitie shares some observations and research about notes in the classroom: the good (writing by hand), the bad (typing a lecture verbatim), and the skillful (learning how to grab the most important notes). Max agrees that knowing what to capture can be refined over time, and he shares some of his own practices. Hint: they may or may not involve a utensil with four ink colors and a pencil. Some of this is about cognition; some of it is about accepting trade-offs. You can't capture it all, but that shouldn't stop any of us from taking the best darn scribbles we can.

An angry introvert and an ambivert walk into a podcast . . . and start shouting about Quiet, by Susan Cain (again). Max is still embracing his label and questioning Caitie’s, but the Priority team has a few more things to say about Cain's a book about the often under-appreciated and misunderstood qualities of introversion. Caitie reflects on various definitions of "sensitivity" and their relationship to introversion. Max wonders if more folks would see the world more clearly—and adjust their reactions to it—if armed with Quiet's ideas. Here in the second half of this two-part series, the team wholeheartedly recommends the book, despite some flaws. Cain has launched a cultural touchstone into the world, and sensitivities be damned, Priority will gladly get loud for Quiet.

Introversion and extroversion are two points on a spectrum... and there is a lot to be learned by identifying your spot on it, too! Listen as the Priority team offers part one in its series on Susan Cain's Quiet, a work exploring the science and implications of a society that doesn't always recognize the power of introverts. In this episode, Caitie and Max walk listeners through a self-assessment using the informal quiz Cain provides, offering reflections on their own temperaments and preferences. Max might amend his results to label himself an "angry introvert"; Caitie is still adjusting to the idea that she's not what she once thought she was. Mystery, intrigue, and cementing the fact that open office plans are silly: let's get quiet! Um... quiet.

nowing how we work can be as important as any other factor on the job, but imagining how much time our work might take can be, well, hard. Because psychology. The team explores the topic of estimation this week, leading Max and Caitie to tackle everything from Parkinson's Law and deadlines to mythical "summer projects" and that mad dash to clean the house before your mother drops in. Tasks may expand to fill the time we give them, but surely we can use this knowledge to our advantage. Or maybe we should just know that the time required for a project might always be... unknown. You know?

Ever wondered what makes a story a classic? Or how many jiggers of literary tropes it takes to mix a mockingbird? Well, the Priority team may not have all of the answers, but that's never stopped them. In their third foray into art and culture, Caitie and Max visit and revisit Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Caitie rediscovers some important moments, the things that make Mockingbird a real gem across her years of "required reading." Max finds the novel more entertaining than he'd expected. (Then again, his pre-reading impressions included "something-something-racism" and "someone named Scout.") Thoughtful cultural critics they are, Caitie and Max decide that maybe it’s not about how much tequila is in your mockingbird. Maybe it's more important that we keep questioning the classics and looking for what’s useful in all those books we were supposed to have read.

Remember when Caitie and Max first debated workspaces, and the power our environment has influence our productivity, work culture, and happiness? Yeah, we don’t, either, because—as it happens—that episode was recorded but never released. But today, they revisit the topic with renewed vigor. Caitie sympathizes with worker bees who just want to put a little personality into their space. Max loves a tidy desk, but more than anything he’s just really, really angry about open plan offices. Unfortunately for the millions who work in them, he’s not alone. The research on multitasking, interruptions, and cubicle farms is fairly damning. But if you need a break from the hubbub, feel free to mosey on down to his private office to shoot the breeze about workspaces. Just be sure to knock first.

A colleague at work, standing behind you, says “Blueberry.” What do you do? The answer to that odd question—and Max has a doozy of a story about one former co-worker’s response—depends on what you bring to the situation. Faced with ambiguous or uncertain circumstances, our expectations shape our experience of life and work. Example abound: a manager who expects a job candidate to flirt during the interview will elicit flirtatious behavior; expectations of children’s performance changes how we treat them, in turn changing their performance. Caitie guides us through an exploration of the social science of expectations, anticipation, and the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. Where does it lead—and how does the blueberry story end? Listen and find out. We promise that the answers will be . . . satisfying. (What, you expected us to say, “unexpected?” That’s what we’re talking about!)

The –isms fly fast and furious this week: racism, sexism, classism, and . . . professionalism? One of these things is not like the others—except that it often is. Much of what we talk about when we talk about professionalism is superficial and confining: modes of dress and speech that limit the scope of who should be regarded as an insider, and who we should trust with our business. But if professionalism is not a tie tack, what is it? Is there any room for standards of punctuality, respect, follow-through, and ethics? Max thinks so, but as he and Caitie wrestle with this week’s topic, only one thing becomes clear: any given standard must exclude someone or something. Perhaps the real question is this: what problem are you trying to solve when you enforce professional standards?

It’s summer in Priority Country, and life hacks are in the air! Caitie and Max share the tips and tricks that can actually tip us over into success (or at least trick us into thinking so), and review a few self-help clichés that are actually, well, helpful. This week, they run down several pieces of advice that truly did prove their worth in the crucible of daily work and life. From saving fifteen minutes at the grocery store to becoming a wealthy, successful writer for The New Yorker (or . . . not), our hosts bring us a wealth of ideas on improving our health, stress levels, and productivity. Your mileage may vary, but here’s a tip that will totally change your game: listen to this episode.

Five months into the podcast, the Priority team is starting over—or, at least, talking about starting over. Our hosts don't decide on a topic until after they start recording, and a wide-ranging discussion of fresh starts (and grocery store life hacks?) ensues. As Max points out, it's often the not-so-fresh-start, picking up the project anew each day, that gets us where we're going. Caitie agrees, and observes that so much of the magic of the fresh start is, in fact, sleight of hand. We create the illusion of change, or trick ourselves into making better choices. But whether you are after real change, or just need a momentary shot of inspiration, today's episode of Priority has something for everybody. If you're new to the show, give yourself the gift a fresh start, and listen to this one.

Thought Leader. Coopetition. Game-Changer. Best of Breed. What do they have in common? If you guessed, “Caitie loathes them,” then you would be right. The Priority team debates business buzzwords, from the dangerous and misleading to the merely vapid. “But what’s the big deal?” asks our enterprise-grade audience. Maybe we have ideated a few too many buzzwords, but so what? Isn’t leveling-up our jargon the way we demonstrate expertise and belonging? These paradigm shifts don’t grow on trees, after all! Perhaps we can debate the merits of corporatese terms like “onboarding,” but much of this language is used to obfuscate and sanitize our work life. We “reorganize” instead of conducting layoffs and claim to be “growth hackers” rather than do anything to produce growth. Jargon has its place, but watch your language―or Max will wash your mouth out . . . with business.

Caitie adds a new term to our conversation on work/life balance: cohesion. So-called experts on “business success” laud focus as the key to achievement, but they leave a lot of the details up to us. Should every role, project, contact, and hobby support some central mission? Or should your hobbies give you a much-needed break and keep you from burning out on that mission? A cohesive plan may get you where you’re going—as Max points out, you’re unlikely to grow up to be an NFL quarterback if you’re also the quarterback of jazz band. But how many of us stuck to plans we made as freshmen? The Priority team’s bottom line on cohesion, typically, isn’t completely coherent. Whether you go all-in on one big thing or wear many hats, you make tradeoffs between power and flexibility (and maybe sanity).

How many hats do you wear? How many plates are you spinning? How many metaphors can Max force into this episode synopsis? Continuing the productivity arc of the past two weeks, the Priority team tackles the hot-button issue of Work/Life Balance. Caitie doesn’t love the term, or the way it pre-frames the conversation in listeners’ minds. But whatever we decide to call it—Max likes “sustainability,” while Caitie speaks of “self-care,” and you may prefer to call it “Al”*—the conversation is critical. Whether you’re putting in 80-hour workweeks or simply playing too many roles, the best time to think about balance is now. The alternative is being stretched so thin you’re no longer even there.

As Caitie's move progresses to the unpacking phase, Max asks a timely question: "At any given moment, how do you know what to work on?" The Priority team proceeds to drop some serious to-do list science. Max can't remember what David Allen's "Four Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment" is called, but he recites it perfectly. Given Caitie's current project, the discussion turns to prioritizing tasks in less-than-optimal circumstances—with more to do than you can do, and when facing exhaustion or overwhelm. But despite the name of the podcast, it's not really about "setting priorities," per se. Not all actions are equal, but checking off even the lowest-priority task beats doing nothing. After all, it all has to get unpacked sooner or later (just don't use that example with Caitie for a week or two. Touchy subject).

While packing to move, Caitie unearths a stack of old day planners, inspiring the Priority team to contemplate personal organizing systems. What makes a planner effective? The choice between boring, analog paper or digital clouds of Google magic is a personal preference—do you want everything in one place, or everything in every place? And who do you trust with your data? Of course, it also matters what you write in your planner. Max asserts that many of these issues become non-issues if you are not especially attached to your lists. And, as the team hinted way back in Episode No. 5, writing to-do items that Future You will understand is key. For instance, what did Caitie mean when she wrote “Research Jedi body question” on her task list? (Hint: it’s probably not about developing Jedi abs).

How do you know when your project is done? David Allen suggests that “the way you get things done is you define what done means, and you define what doing looks like.” The team discusses the project management triangle, in which the constraints of time, budget, and scope are balanced against each other. Caitie agrees that we need to know what done means and what the constraints are, as every project could be polished forever without ever quite reaching “perfect.”

After a week off from Priority’s usual topics, Caitie and Max return, ready to cover new ground. Naturally, they revisit a previous topic instead: audience. Caitie recounts how Marco Arment’s article “Apple Has Lost the Functional High Ground” unexpectedly garnered massive media coverage (and controversy). We all want our work and our words to reflect on our best intentions. That’s why we polish them, and risk public scrutiny. But what happens when our work reaches an audience we weren't thinking of? Or the audience hears us in a way we hadn't imagined? Max, ever the optimist, points out how quixotic it is to try to dictate who sees our work and how they interpret it. There are no easy solutions, but the news isn't all bad. There are also benefits to capturing and sharing our experiences—whether we've polished them or not.