Practical definition: Priorities

Posted by Marc Hodak on July 27, 2008 under Practical definitions | Read the First Comment

Randy Pausch of “Last Lecture” fame passed away at the end of last week. It was quite an exit.

I was inspired by Randy in many ways, not least by the number of people he had touched in his years as a teacher. Before his “Last Lecture,” Randy thought he would be best remembered on the Internet for his talk on time management. In that talk, he showed Covey’s matrix on prioritization. The key is to do what’s important, and leave off what’s not, regardless of urgency. If you do it right, the important stuff is less likely to become urgent.

The whole thing has made me rethink my priorities, including the value of daily entries on this blog. These things take time for me to write, time that arguably comes at the expense of things I’m actually paid to do, not to mention time with my family. I have toyed with simpler posts, but others have already cornered that market. I was hoping someone would join me to post material. A couple of people I thought would be great have, in fact, asked to contribute, but other things overtook them and they crapped out on me (you know who you are, you rats!).

So, I will likely drop down to a couple posts per week along these lines:

– Comments on executive compensation (for my clients, if not my fans)
– Catalogue of examples of perverse incentives, especially unintended consequences of well-intentioned policies, great and small (for a maybe future book)
– The occasional movie or book review (as little as I get out)

If there is news about corporate incentives, I will feel compelled to blog about it more promptly since that seems to get picked up by the major news outlets and sometimes leads to broader coverage. We’ll see.

In the meantime, Randy’s inspiration will remain with me so I might contribute anything like what he was able to in his too few years.