Find your "yes" burning inside

Last time I talked about the fact that "working hard" is not the same as "working productively."  I mentioned Ryan Holiday's daily devotional text, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I have been faithfully reading since the beginning of the calendar year.  As it turns out, Ryan Holiday also has a blog and a daily email on the philosophy of Stoicism.  I wanted to continue on the theme of working productively with a passage from one of Ryan Holiday's recent posts.  The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca said, "We will benefit from that helpful precept of Democritus, showing us that tranquility lies in not undertaking tasks, either in public or private, that are either numerous or greater than our resources."

Democritus is frequently referred to as the "laughing philosopher" due to his emphasis on being cheerful (another big proponent of looking on the bright side!).  Incidentally, we have Democritus to thank for the term, "atom" which comes from the Greek word "atomos" meaning "indivisible" (Democritus and the Atomists believed that atoms were the smallest indivisible bodies from which everything else was composed).  But I digress - let's get back to Seneca.

My point (and Seneca's too, I believe) is that "good working hard" doesn't always get us to where we want to go or need to go.  We have to take into account what we can reasonably accomplish with the time, energy, and resources that we have available.  As leaders, we need to learn to prioritize.  As Ryan Holiday writes, "What's the most important thing in our lives?  What's the next most important thing?  What are we going to say no to so we can focus on those things?  What are we going to say no to (or yes to) in order to protect our personal happiness and peace?"

We just can't say "yes" to every opportunity, project, task, or initiative.  We have to prioritize based upon what's most important for our organization (when prioritizing our professional lives) or our own personal goals and objectives (when prioritizing our personal ones).  Prioritization forces us to do less "so that we can do more of what we care most about."  Management guru and author Stephen Covey had this to say about setting priorities, "You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside."