Fierce Prioritisation: How to Get Better Results Without Working Harder

This is the transcript of The Refreshing Leadership Podcast episode: Fierce Prioritisation: How to Get Better Results Without Working Harder, published on 13th April 2026.

If you asked me what is the easiest way of having it all - and this is a question that clients ask me surprisingly often - my answer would be very simple. Fierce prioritisation.

Prioritisation is how you get better results in the things that matter most without working harder, and often actually while working less.

But accessing this requires a fairly uncomfortable mindset shift for a lot of high achievers. It might be letting go of some habits and identities that we hold onto that make us look very productive, competent, and busy - but they don't necessarily move the needle on the things that matter the most.

How I learned this lesson at university

I actually learned this lesson fairly early on in life. I remember realising it very consciously when I was studying economics for my finals at uni.

When it came to those exams, I made a deliberate decision that I was not going to try and cover the entire syllabus equally. The workload was, by any standard, enormous. And instead of trying to do everything, I made some calculated bets.

I focused my energy on the areas where I thought I could do the most interesting, creative, thoughtful work, and I consciously allowed the other areas to be good enough.

The reality was that I probably revised less than half of the syllabus in depth. The trade-off was that the areas I did focus on, I could go much deeper, get creative, draw together different ideas from different areas of economics - and I really enjoyed that intellectual work.

This was a calculated risk. These were my finals after all, so it wasn't low stakes. But I had probably learned over the years that there were ways I could think like a true economist: optimise my resources, and think about how to best allocate my very limited time.

The result was that I graduated with a high first class degree from Cambridge University. I also received the award of titular scholar for the highest first in development economics. Honestly, it was one of the most enjoyable years I'd had, academically and socially.

The myth of working harder

That experience taught me something important, quite early. The mantra of "work harder and you'll get better results" is not always the lever that produces the best outcomes.

Sometimes you get more leverage from stepping back, taking what I would loosely call a slightly lazier approach, and figuring out the game that you are actually playing - and solving for that game very deliberately.

When you do that, you still put in work. It does take time to step back, do that reflection, and go into that review mode. This is what we do a lot in coaching. That step back is challenging, and you've got to be willing to do it.

But when you've done that work, when you've done that prioritisation, when you've seen the lay of the land - the work that you then put in can produce much bigger returns. And that's what fierce prioritisation allows you to do.

Why this matters right now

The reason this feels like such an important conversation to have right now is that we've moved out of those more inward, quiet winter months. We're in that more high-activity springtime. There is energy to move forward. The natural world has woken up, and I feel like it's a great time to make progress towards our needle-moving goals.

But the risk in seasons like this is that there is a lot going on, and we can fire off in lots of different directions. That's exactly what I want to help us avoid today.

In this episode, I'm going to talk you through the ways of making good prioritisation decisions, including when you are struggling to make difficult choices - because that is the dilemma that a lot of my clients bring to me.

By the end of the episode, you should feel like you've got a clearer decision-making criteria for fierce prioritisation.

Prioritisation isn't typically something that we were taught at school, and I don't actually see it being taught very well inside organisations either. So let's dive in.

Welcome to the Refreshing Leadership Podcast with me, Maya Gudka. This is where we refresh your leadership thinking in both life and work, so that you can step back from overwork, think more strategically, and create life and work that feels meaningful, spacious, and exciting to wake up to. We don't take traditional leadership and self-help wisdom for granted, drawing on both research - my own research in leadership and wellbeing - and thousands of hours of coaching senior leaders. I'm here to share the ideas that work in the messy complexity of real life, not just the ones that sound good in theory.

Getting organised is the foundation, not the finish line

During January and February of this year, I focused quite a lot on organisation, because winter is a time when we can be a bit more preparatory, a bit more inward. We can be getting things in order, clearing space mentally, putting systems in place - and all of that creates space and energy for the next stage. Feeling rested and clear for when spring kicks in.

What I'm saying today is not to knock being organised. Getting organised in specific areas that are of importance is a really foundational layer and very valuable. It can improve mental bandwidth, reduce stress, reduce last-minute scrambling - and as I'm finding out right now working with my son who is learning about how to be organised, it can create a lot more feelings of calm when you know you have good organisation systems.

So that is definitely our foundational layer. But for this next season, I want to take this to the up-level of fierce prioritisation.

The prioritisation gap inside organisations

There's a well-known piece of research from McKinsey which found that executives spend nearly 60% of their time working on things that don't meaningfully contribute to the organisation's strategic priorities.

These are not disorganised people. They will be capable, motivated, hardworking people. It's not an effort issue. It's a prioritisation issue.

Because prioritisation is hard. It's particularly difficult inside organisations today, with many disruptive changes and a lot of uncertainty. But also because there's often not enough clarity from the top about what matters the most, and which decisions deserve priority.

Often my leaders are being asked to delegate more and focus on priorities, but they're not being told what they can let go of. I've literally sat inside conversations between my clients and their line managers where not even one inch will be given on what you can let go of - and yet they're being asked to deeply focus on particular areas. There can be a real imbalance inside organisations on this.

What also ends up happening is that because that clarity isn't coming from the top, people are trying to second-guess and infer what the priorities are. And when you're second-guessing, you're never going to feel completely confident that you've got the answer right. So what do you do? You try and cover a few extra bases, keep more plates spinning - and again, that is a brilliant way of staying busy, but not necessarily moving the most important work forward.

The leadership move: clarifying conversations

The leadership move here is to focus more time on clarifying conversations. Something like: "Just so I'm clear - if we get to the end of this period (a specifically defined period: a year, six months, a quarter) and these things have been achieved, would that look like success to you? Is that how we are defining success?"

If there's an area you're not clear on, it is your right to seek further clarity. Because as time goes on, you will be asked to make decisions, other things will come up, life is unexpected, work is unexpected, curve balls will come in - and you need to know how to prioritise and reprioritise when those things happen.

There's an inherent thing in a lot of my clients who are highly accountable, high achievers: they feel like they should just magically know what matters the most. And even if they've got a good radar for it, they naturally don't feel comfortable forcing that question of clarity with those above them. And that's where the overwork creeps in, because you are trying to be good at everything.

Prioritisation is messy - and that's a good sign

Now, prioritisation is actually quite messy in practice. That might feel a bit uncomfortable, but it's not super tidy. Sometimes some areas of your life will look a little bit messier when you are doing fierce prioritisation.

Some of your emails may get answered a little bit later. You might need to be chased on a few things. Some things are simply not done to the same standard that you were doing them before. That's how we create space and bandwidth to fiercely prioritise.

Timothy Ferris describes this as racking up library fines. In The Four-Hour Work Week, he encouraged a lot of prioritisation activity, and one example he gave was that you want to be racking up those low-level, small library fines. That's a sign that you are focusing on the stuff that matters the most, and the little stuff is just in the background - not top of the list.

That always stuck with me.

Another phrase I really like is: "Your lack of planning is not my emergency." If people are asking for things on email or WhatsApp that require immediate responses, that's a signal that they haven't been doing forward planning. And that's not for you to then become reactive to.

Hopefully you get the idea - actually shifting into maybe some less reactive modes in certain areas of your life, which might look a little bit messier, but actually are a positive sign that you are shifting into a more prioritised mode.

This might feel uncomfortable. But if everything is being perfectly responded to and everything is Pinterest-perfect, it might be a sign that you're not prioritising hard enough.

The messy kitchen story

I want to give you another personal story to really bring this home.

When my kids were young, I was working full time and doing a masters. My mum might come around on a weekend morning and see a very messy kitchen. From the outside walking in, she might have thought that my husband and I were both very disorganised. But actually, the reason the kitchen was messy was because I had been upstairs doing some of my most cognitively demanding work of that day, which was really important at that time for the masters. That's when my energy was best. The dishes could wait, but the thinking couldn't. The dishes would get done eventually, but there was a real risk that if that thinking didn't happen, it was not going to happen for that day.

So the prioritisation was actually right, but it didn't look like it from the outside.

Don't run a marathon on a treadmill

The other metaphor I love is from Laura Vanderkam. She talks about not running a marathon on a treadmill. You might feel like you're working really hard - sweating, putting in the miles, keeping everything going, error-free. But actually you're not really getting anywhere with it.

When we try and apply the same prioritisation levels to every domain of our lives, it can feel like that. Everything is being beautifully maintained. There's nothing visually as a giveaway that we're not on top of our lives, but actually the big things are not moving forward.

Instead, I want us to get off the treadmill and make physical progress in key areas - in the kind of work that compounds over time. So that you can look back on a week or a day and say: I did that needle-moving activity towards that aspect of my vision. I did that needle-moving activity towards that high priority.

Because those tasks are usually harder, less urgent, with nobody tapping you on the shoulder for them - and they're easier to postpone. That's why they need to happen when your energy is highest, and they need to be protected.

Practical tools: when priorities feel equally important

Let me give you some practical tools now. What I've seen regularly is that my clients will have two or three areas that they're really struggling to prioritise between.

You might have about three big, chunky priorities that are actually equally important in terms of the outcome. However, this is where your decision-making comes in. They're not all equally likely to happen just by default.

So your criteria for prioritisation becomes: which one of these is going to happen anyway, and which one of these will slip unless I intentionally protect it?

One of my lovely social workers that I was coaching is also studying at the same time as part of her training. She has to maintain both her output as a social worker and all of the studies. Both of those things are equally important, and she was struggling to prioritise between them and feeling completely overwhelmed.

What we realised, though, is that on any given day, the studying - the cognitive stuff, the assignments - was much easier to postpone. Versus the actual social work, which was happening as part of a team, had natural deadlines built in, was much more active, and was also really the reason why she was doing what she was doing. She was driven to do that social work.

So although both priorities mattered equally, the studying had to be treated as higher priority to protect it. It needed space creating around it. It needed deliberate energy and planning. The other area could more easily take care of itself.

In another personal example: for me, wellbeing is really important, but it might not be more important than work or family relationships. However, strength training is just not going to happen automatically. Nor is really good food prep.

So even though those things are just as important as family, I have to give them higher priority - the strength training and the food prep - otherwise they're just going to disappear in a busy week.

The real question to ask yourself

Your real question here is not actually what matters the most. It is: what is important, but won't happen unless I create the conditions for it to succeed?

That means you need to create the time, space, and energy for it.

Fierce prioritisation is about how you move your life forward without simply working harder.

Think about what you personally might need to let go of. I've given you some examples today - hopefully quite tangible ones. Allowing some areas of your life to get a little bit messier, racking up those metaphorical library fines. Where can you do a little bit of that to create the bandwidth to prioritise the stuff that really needs all of your focus right now?

This might look a little bit less perfect from the outside. For my perfectionists, this will feel uncomfortable initially. But this is where, when you have a really clear 10-year vision, three-year critical path, and one-year plan, you can start to get perfectionist about that. You shift your zone of perfectionism to your actual vision.

When you can utilise those skills in your perfectionism for the right thing - the vision itself, not a particular area of your life that needs to look a certain way - you can start to unlock this prioritisation and these higher levels of outcome in the areas that matter to you, without burning out, without exhausting yourself.

When you're clearer about what matters the most, this trade-off becomes easier to make. And over time, I see this as creating better outcomes - and also creating a more relaxed version of you.

Resources and next steps

I hope that has been of help.

If you are still thinking "I don't have the vision" - you've got access to my three-day no-brainer Vision Unblocked audio course. Or there's the bigger Vision Code programme, where I literally walk you through creating your 10-year vision, the three-year critical path, and the one-year plan. We also have one-to-one coaching time in that to really nail it. After creating that, prioritisation is going to feel so much easier. The links to that are in the show notes.

Do send this to somebody that you think could benefit from better prioritisation, or somebody you'd like to share it with for accountability - so you can say, "This is something I'm going to be trying in my life, and I'd love you to know why I'm doing it."

If you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, you can add comments or questions there. I love hearing from you, and I'm going to be doing a Q&A episode soon - so if you have any specific questions, please let me know.

I look forward to connecting with you next time. Bye-bye.

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About Maya

Maya Gudka is an executive coach specialising in C-suite career progression and leadership development. She works with senior leaders in major organisations on strategic career planning, executive presence, and building sustainable influence. Maya hosts The Refreshing Leadership Podcast, which ranks in the top 2% of podcasts globally and has nearly 300 episodes exploring the challenges faced by ambitious professionals.