How to Find the One Thing That Matters Most This Week

If you're running a business, the hardest thing to protect is thinking time. The diary fills up, the escalations land, and the work of actually deciding what matters most gets pushed to some quieter moment that never arrives.

The festive period makes this worse. Family and work pressures pile up together, and any serious thinking about direction gets deferred to January. Then January arrives with the added weight of needing to do something better than last year. So when do you actually take the time to work on this? When do you step back and ask what the most important thing is right now? My view is that the best moment is this one, because getting clear on that single thing tends to make everything else easier to see.

Strategy Means Making Choices

Michael Porter describes strategy as making choices and tradeoffs. I find that useful. Strategy also means choosing to be different in order to get a better outcome. The foundation of Traverse Worldwide was built on a decision to work differently from the conventional office model. I set up a consulting business designed to operate from anywhere in the world, and I spent Christmas and New Year working through what that actually means in practice.

I also had an interesting conversation with a consultant from Remote Year, a company that manages groups of 70 or more digital nomads around the world, moving them to a new city every month for a year. I wanted to understand how they handle the logistics, the emotional side, and the shifts in working style. Many of the people they work with are consultants.

Finding the One Thing That Matters Most

So what is the one thing that would add the most value to my work right now? It is getting clear on where I add value as a consultant, my reason for being. Some call it the pitch, the elevator conversation, the value proposition.

This has felt overwhelming because I am constantly drawn to how many things I could do, which has made it hard to decide what I should do.

To work through it, I came back to something Dr Derek Roger says: when you are feeling overwhelmed by change, the way through is to wake up and stop daydreaming.

"The answer to successfully navigate stress is to simply wake up and stop daydreaming."

Stop Daydreaming. Start Noticing What You Are Actually Good At.

Taking Roger's words seriously, I stopped thinking about what Traverse could become and started looking at what I am actually good at. I began noticing the small things that give me satisfaction in work done well, and thinking about how to position Traverse by being honest about my own specialism, because people hire specialists. I even wrote some lists.

What I had been treating as a gap turned out to be a strength.

Business Synthesis as a Specialist Value

My specialist value is business synthesis: absorbing and refining the best thinking available and applying it in new ways. I am well read, well educated, and have worked across a range of industries and careers in several countries, cultures and contexts. Each of those experiences gave me tools and skills that can be applied to real business problems.

• That breadth has allowed me to see opportunities others miss.
• It has enabled me to pull together practical solutions that had not been considered before.
• I have done this successfully a number of times.

This synthesis is something I live and breathe. I will be developing Traverse over the coming months by absorbing the best of what I see and building it into what I offer. Everything I learn can be translated into client value at some point. How many consultancies can say that?

Separating Needs from Wants to Sharpen Your Focus

The same challenge of identifying the one thing that matters most shows up at a team level too, and the root cause is usually the same: a lack of clarity about what actually matters. Many people are full of Wants but unclear on their Needs. They feel unfulfilled, always chasing more, pulled in multiple directions because they are pursuing too many things at once. They cannot work out what to stop or start, which leads to burnout and resentment.

The Three-List Exercise

Once that distinction is clear, a useful exercise is to write three lists: what do I Need from Myself, from My Career, and from My Network.

• Myself: my mind, body and wellbeing.
• My career: the way I financially support myself and provide security and stability.
• My network: my relationships, social circle, colleagues and so on.

People usually start with long lists. Gradually, the Wants in disguise get crossed out, and what remains often sounds something like this:

"I need good health and sufficient money to survive and to be surrounded by people I love and care about."

Lists vary, but most people's Needs turn out to be self-focused and very big picture. They miss the habits and actions required to deliver those Needs, so they do not provide a real pathway to achieving them. That requires harder, deeper thinking.

De-personalised Reflection

I use the term De-personalised Reflection to describe what has to happen next. Picture a dog trying to cross a stream. The current is too fast, the water too cold and deep to swim. The dog keeps running back and forth, getting more frustrated. Its thinking is fixed on one thing: "I need to cross this stream." Step back, and you might see a bridge, a log, another way across. Stepping away from the immediate task to ask what the situation actually requires is how you identify the real Needs.

The same applies to us. The instinctive response is "I need health," but if you step back and ask what your situation actually requires for a more successful self, the answers become more specific and more useful:

• I need to exercise more and eat better.
• I need to drink less alcohol.
• I need to stop making poor behaviour choices.
• I need to plan my groceries so I do not get caught short and buy fast food.
• I need to take time for my wellbeing and mental wellness.
• I need time out to recharge without feeling guilt.

Honesty is required here, which is exactly why the dog analogy works. It was obvious to you what the dog needed. The challenge is getting past your own ego to be equally honest about what you Need. Being clear on these three areas allows you to focus on what is essential to your success and identify tangible actions to work on. That creates forward momentum and the sense of fulfilment that high performers depend on.

The Question Worth Sitting With This Week

So what is the most important thing you could be doing right now, because I doubt it is the same thing you were doing in December.

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.

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