The Next Right Move - Pt 2
When suddenly everything is important and nothing can be starved
Have you found yourself in a scenario where everything was a priority?
Where selecting one thing meant stalling everything else?
That’s the exact situation Ernest Shackleton found himself in.
It was 1915 and Shackleton with a crew of 28 men, endeavored to be the first to cross the Antarctica by ship.
However, deep in the Weddell Sea, ice packs closed around his ship, the Endurance, and crushed it into splinters.
“The ship was literally being torn apart piece by piece. The heavy timbers, seasoned and built to withstand the heaviest polar seas, were splintering into long, jagged shards. Shackleton stood on the shaking ice floe, watching his dream quite literally reduced to kindling… He told the men, 'The ship and the stores are gone — now we go home.’”
As the men jumped off the sinking ship, reality soon hit Ernest that he was now not dealing with one but a portfolio of threatening problems.
Food supplies were running out, cold was never letting up, drifting ice would break any minute, and the collapsing morale of 28 men.
How would Shackleton deal with this situation where everything was important and nothing could be starved?
Like Shackleton you may find yourself holding several real interdependent problems at once, none of which can be delayed without stalling.
A client escalation. A pricing decision. AI agents waiting for your decision to approve.
How do you deal when the old playbook of “focus on one thing and ignore the rest” isn’t applicable?
We discuss this topic this week and share a loop we built to help you identify the best possible move to make right now whenever you find yourself in such cases.
The complete workbook is also ready today so that you can practice in your own work.
We continue.