How to Prioritize What You’ll Work On Next in Your Business
If you’re a purpose-driven leader building something meaningful, there comes a moment when you stop asking, “Do I have ideas?” and start asking: What do I actually work on next?
When leaders come to me overwhelmed, they are usually juggling a lot. They’re juggling the need for more visibility, which they think will come through getting viral social media posts.
They’re juggling a brand that isn’t fully cohesive or finished visually.
Oftentimes, they haven’t truly clarified their mission or vision. They just know there is something in their heart or their spirit leading them to build something right now.
They’re action takers. So they’re moving fast.
But moving fast and moving forward are not usually the same thing.
What Lack of Focus Actually Looks Like
With clarity on where they are really trying to go, everything looks fuzzy and unfocused…like having on an old prescription lens or no glasses at all when you really need glasses. This lack of focus usually looks like:
Constant marketing ideas, but not producing them
Scattered content or communications creation that isn’t leading anywhere meaningful
Lots of ideas that feel exciting
A lot of activity that feels productive
But it’s actually confusing activity for real momentum toward the goal they’re trying to achieve.
The emotional cost of not knowing what to prioritize is that you start spinning your wheels. You feel busy, but you don’t feel clear.
And I believe this is one of the reasons so many businesses struggle. There is a real desire in people’s hearts to build something impactful. But that desire is based on a feeling, and feelings cannot control our prioritization list.
Strategy has to.
Why It’s So Hard to Choose What’s Next
Most business owners are not afraid of choosing the wrong thing. They simply don’t know what to choose.
There are ten different ideas coming at them from every direction and angle.
Advice from podcasts. What someone else just launched.
A new content strategy. A trending platform.
It becomes confusing.
When you’re getting inputs constantly, your priorities also shift constantly. That instability creates more doubt, not less.
Prioritize Your Vision First
If you want to know how to prioritize what to work on next in your business, you have to start with vision. You have to prioritize where you are trying to go. And that vision needs to exist on multiple levels:
A 25-year or even 100-year vision for the organization
A 3-year direction
A 1-year goal
A 6-month focus
A 90-day target
Those smaller components are not random. They are stepping stones leading you toward your long-term vision.
If you don’t have those layers defined, everything feels equally urgent. When you do have them defined, many things naturally fall away.
The Biggest Mistake Leaders Make
The biggest mistake I see leaders make when deciding what’s next is that they start prioritizing based on what they are consuming, instead of turning internally.
Internally to themselves.
Internally to their intuition.
Internally to what they already know they are trying to build.
Internally to what is actually needed in the world.
And internally to their team.
The people working inside your company day in and day out often have a very clear understanding of what could be improved or fixed to truly move the organization forward.
Prioritization is not about reacting to noise. It’s about aligning action with vision.
A Practical Filter for Deciding What to Focus On
Before you add something new to your plate, ask:
Does this directly move us toward our long-term vision?
Does this support our 90-day focus?
Is this solving a real bottleneck?
Do we have the capacity to execute this well?
Is this strategy, or is this stimulation?
Not every exciting idea deserves immediate execution. Clarity often means choosing fewer things, not more.
The Real Work of Leadership
Purpose-driven leaders often have big hearts and big ideas. That is not the problem.
The problem happens when your feelings are running your decisions instead of your vision. Your heart can spark the idea. But (and this is big but) your strategy must shape the execution.
If you feel scattered right now, pause and ask:
What are we building?
What does success look like one year from now?
What must be true in the next 90 days for that to happen?
Choose one meaningful priority. Let everything else be secondary.
You don’t need more ideas. You need alignment on the direction you’re heading and decisiveness to select the actions that will move you forward on that path.
Want to work with our team to get clear on your mission, vision, or strategy? Let’s talk.