Our days are so full of tasks to complete, like quests in a never-ending role-playing game.
Laundry, dishes, decluttering, bills, groceries, straightening, meal prep, errands.
Emails, phone calls, status reports, one-on-one check-ins, presentation revisions, invoices.
Decisions, optimizations, quick fixes, interventions, assists, demonstrations, coordinations, deferments.
It’s both exhilarating and exhausting to check off items from the ever-growing to-do list, whether it’s explicitly written out before you or churning amorphously in your overloaded brain.
That’s why it’s so important to take a step back. To climb a tree and make sure your team is swinging the machete in the right direction as you all hack through the jungle:
- What are we trying to do? Why are we doing it?
- What does success look like? Is there a metric, a milestone, a goal to shoot for?
- Where do we want to be in 1, 3, 5, 10 years? How do we get there?
- Do all of us agree?
Whether it’s your family, your coworkers, your activity group, your circle of friends… one rarely hears of anyone accused of being “too strategic.” Get away for a weekend. Have an offsite. Go on a retreat. Meet for a drink. And while you’re away from the checklists, figure out where you’re going. Then you’ll find joy in having a progress bar to go along with your checklist.
The Joys of JJFoley 
2 thoughts on “Strategic vs Tactical”