Ep 128: The Priority Framework
How to Decide What Actually Deserves Your Creative Attention
SUMMARY
Your to-do list might be the biggest creativity killer in your business and you don't even realize it. Most task management systems are designed like grocery lists—just a random collection of stuff to check off. But creative work doesn't work that way.
In this episode, I'm sharing why traditional task management fails creative brains and introducing you to the Priority Framework—a simple method that will transform how you decide what actually deserves your attention.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ Not everything deserves equal attention: When everything feels equally important, nothing is important. The Priority Framework combines the Focus Funnel and Eisenhower Matrix to ruthlessly filter what truly matters.
⚡️ Creative work isn't linear: Unlike traditional task management systems that assume linear progress, creative work ebbs and flows. Your task management system needs to account for this reality.
⚡️ Protect your creative energy like the finite resource it is: Schedule high-impact creative work during your peak hours and eliminate decision fatigue by knowing exactly what deserves your focus.
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "When everything feels equally important, then nothing is important. When everything is at the same status, there's no differentiator of what you actually need to do next."
💬 "By delegating it and ensuring that it gets done, you are helping actually see that thing through. Whereas if you hold on to it and it never gets done, then you're not the hero anymore. You're the villain."
💬 "Your creativity is your most valuable asset along with your time. Stop treating those things like they're unlimited and start protecting them like the finite resources they really are."
EPISODE RESOURCES
⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here
TRANSCRIPT
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Your to-do list might be the biggest creativity killer in your business and you don't even realize it. So today I'm sharing why traditional task management fails creative brains and introducing you to a simple method that will transform how you decide what actually deserves your attention. Let's get into it.
Taking creatives from chaos to clarity. Well, everyone, welcome back to Creativity Made Easy. This is the podcast for creative professionals and agencies who want to scale their business without sacrificing their sanity. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, and I help creative professionals and agencies know themselves, their process and their team so that they can move from chaos to clarity in their systems and processes. Whether you're a freelancer, agency owner or leading a creative team, this show is about building systems that free your creativity instead of constraining it. Let's dive in here.
Here's the problem that I see consistently time after time, no matter how big the agency or how early into the startup phase a freelancer may be: creative work requires deep focus and mental energy. But most to-do lists are designed like grocery lists. They're just a random collection of stuff to check off, right? And checking off feels really, really good. And we need that system to propel us moving forward. But this approach is actually killing your creativity and keeping you stuck in reactive mode.
So let's talk about first define this: creative brain versus traditional task management, right? The key difference here is that creative work isn't linear like most task management systems assume that it is. It ebbs and flows. Sometimes it goes forward, sometimes it goes back, sometimes it repeats, right? It doesn't just go from start to finish. So how do you know what's most important?
We often feel overwhelmed by this and we sit down and we look at our to-do list, if we have a to-do list even, or even if it's just a to-do list that's in our head of all the things that we need to get done and it's not actually down on paper, which is a totally separate problem. But when we have this sense of overwhelm, everything feels equally important. When everything equally feels important, then nothing is important. When everything is at the same status, there's no differentiator of what do I actually need to do next.
And so what ends up happening is you, your team, your project managers, whoever you have with you, or just you, just you and yourself—you begin to get decision fatigue because you're constantly choosing what you need to work on while worrying about what you're not working on. And then there's this context switching between creative and administrative tasks. What mindset do I need to be in?
So what I want to share with you today is what I've been dubbing the Priority Method or the Priority Framework, because not everything on your list deserves the same level of attention. And most things that ended up there might not even deserve your attention at all.
So I want to just kind of walk you through what I've put together in this Priority Method or Priority Framework. And it's a combination of two things that we've talked about on this show a lot. We've talked about the Focus Funnel, which is not original to me and has been around for many, many years. And the Eisenhower Matrix, where we decide what's urgent and important or neither. Right? And that also not from me. It's obviously called the Eisenhower Matrix for reasons because President Eisenhower created this and that's how he decided what he would put his focus on.
But I like to combine these two aspects of the Focus Funnel and the Eisenhower Matrix, and what I do with my clients in our coaching and as we're working and building systems together and understanding what we need to put our attention to, we combine these efforts and say let's take the Focus Funnel. We're going to put everything through that and we'll talk about that. And then on the other side of it, then we're going to talk about when it comes out the other side, is it actually urgent and important. And if not, maybe we put it back through the Focus Funnel again. So you see again, creative work, not linear, it kind of cycles around.
So let me walk you through this real quick if you've never heard of these things before. So the Focus Funnel starts, obviously, it's a funnel shape. So it starts big at the top and narrows down at the bottom. And so you can see here on your screen, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see that everything that's on your task list goes into this funnel.
Now I'll pause right there for a second and say, how do I not even know what to put in the funnel? That's great. Understanding that is a huge deal. So first thing I tell everyone to do is to mind dump or brain dump everything, every single task gets out of your head and onto paper or digital lists somewhere. And what you're going to do is you're not going to think about it. You're just going to go, if it's something in my head that I feel like I need to be doing or I need to get done today, this week, this month, this year, whatever, then I'm going to jot it down and I'm going to keep writing until my brain is completely empty of everything that I feel like I need to do, all the pressures of what I need to get done.
And now we're gonna put it through the Focus Funnel. So you can see at the top of the Focus Funnel, it says tasks go in here, right? So tasks go in there. And the first thing we're gonna ask is, does this really need to be done at all? That's the eliminate phase. Does it need to be done at all? Is it not just you or someone else on your team, just in general? Is this actually going to move the needle forward in what we need to do right now? Or is it just busy work that's distracting us? If it is, eliminate it.
If it passes the test of, actually, it does need to be done right now, and you want to get real ruthless with this. And if you need to bring in outside help like ourselves at Chief Creative Consultants or anyone else on your team or a friend or a mentor and just kind of have that second brain to say, does this need to happen? Does this need to be done at all? So if it passes that test, then you move on to the automate question, right?
So if it can't be eliminated, that's not a problem. Can it be automated? And this is where we talk about systems, right? Are we scheduling automatic tools? There's so many resources at our disposal here in 2025 where we can automate so many things digitally or we can automate it by building a system and the system keeps us from having to think about it over and over again, which burns up mental energy. So can it be automated? Can it be systematized? Can it be scheduled?
If the answer is yes, then great. Then you know exactly what to do with that task next. If it can't, and you're like, no, this is like a phone call that I need to make, or this is like something where it's a little bit more—there's no way I can build a system around this. I would venture to say that you probably still could, but let's just say for the sake of this podcast episode and the Focus Funnel that you've gone through the automate section and you say, you know what, I can't automate it, so it's going to continue through. We've already determined that it needs to be done. We've already determined that it can't be automated.
So the third section in the Focus Funnel is can it be delegated? Can someone else do this? Someone else on your team, some other agency, some third-party app or situation that you can hire or delegate to and say, hey, this needs to get done and it can't be automated, can you do this for me? Can someone else do it? Does it have to be you?
And the struggle I see with creative entrepreneurs and agencies all the time is they always, even in a team of 10 to 20 people, everyone thinks it has to be me that does this. It has to be—I have to be the hero of this project. You don't. You don't have to. In fact, by delegating it and ensuring that it gets done, you are helping actually see that thing through. Whereas if you hold on to it and it never gets done, then you're not the hero anymore. Right? You're the villain. You're the one that stopped the progress from happening.
So can it be eliminated? No, we have to do it. Can it be automated? No, someone has to do this. Can it be delegated? If yes, delegate it. If not, you can see at the bottom of the Focus Funnel here, this is where it ends up going. Okay, well, it can't be eliminated. Can't be automated. And it can't be delegated. That means I have to do it. Okay, so now the question becomes now or later, right? Can we procrastinate this on purpose until it really matters? Or do we need to concentrate? So is it procrastinate or concentrate? Concentrate meaning it must be done and only I can do it and you do it right then as soon as possible, right?
So most people end right here. I like to take the things that come out of the bottom of the Focus Funnel and I like to put them onto the Eisenhower Matrix. And we've talked about this many times before. There's the four categories. There's urgent and important, there's urgent but not important, there's important but not urgent, and then there's neither important nor urgent.
Now, if it's neither important nor urgent, that means if you're using this Priority Method that I use combining the Focus Funnel and the Eisenhower Matrix, if once you get through everything on the Focus Funnel and then you look at what's left and you ruthlessly categorize what's left, if anything ends up in the not urgent or important category, that means you missed something in the eliminate phase, right? So you need to go back and go, hey, this actually just needs to be eliminated because it's not urgent and it's not important. It's not going to move the needle forward. And yeah, I thought it was. And yeah, I thought I had to do it. And I thought we couldn't automate it. But you know what? At the end of the day, like it just doesn't need to get done.
The Eisenhower Matrix in this case, whether you use it at the beginning, like before you use the Focus Funnel or after you use the Focus Funnel, it doesn't matter either way. These are both running double filters. And the reason we double filter this whole process is because we as humans need that second act of accountability and creatives love to hang on to things. And we have this huge amount of pride that we accomplished it. Like I said, that we're the heroes.
But we have this double filter system where it's hey, we're gonna use the Eisenhower Matrix first and then we're gonna put it through the Focus Funnel. I particularly like to go through the Focus Funnel first because I feel like it's a little easier to kind of quickly categorize things as gravity takes it from the top to the bottom. And then when we get to the bottom then we can look and say is it urgent, is it important, is it urgent and important or is it neither urgent nor important?
So we've gotten to the bottom of the Focus Funnel now. We're looking at the Eisenhower Matrix and we say you know what, everything that came out of the bottom of the Focus Funnel is gonna go into one of these four boxes. Again, if you're watching on YouTube, you see it on your screen now. One of these four boxes, all right?
So if it ends up being, like most things that come out of that list, you're gonna think that it's probably urgent and important or one of the other. This is—you have to get really ruthless. Which one of these things deserves the top 20% or less of the echelon of all the things that are on your plate? Urgent meaning like this has to get done as soon as possible or else, right? And be realistic about the or else. Don't imagine the or else. Be very realistic about the or else. And then important—is this really going to move the needle, right? So timing and weight. Is it important? Is the weight of it? Is it urgent? That's the timing of it.
So if it meets both of those categories, then it goes into your urgent and important category. And now you don't have to choose between now and later. You know that those are the things that you have to do today or this week.
Now, if it ends up just in the urgent category, but not in the important category, this is where I advise you and my clients to go back through and go, okay, but maybe we missed something here. If it's urgent, but not super important, to me, that means it probably could get delegated, right? And we missed that when we went through the Focus Funnel in the first pass of this Priority Method.
So if it's just urgent, but not important, then I think that's something that we could delegate. Same thing as if it's important but not urgent. I would say this category, if it's important, not urgent, would be something that you have—actually, you know what? I have time to build a system or to figure out a way to automate this because it is important. It does need to get done. It doesn't need to get done right now. But what I can do right now is delegate creating the system to automate the thing later. Right? Like you see how all the parts start to work together.
So those are what fall into the urgent category. Urgent means you should probably just delegate it. Right. If it's not of super importance, but it does kind of need to happen soon, I would say delegate that. If it's in the important category, but not urgent, then I would say, yeah, you could probably delegate it. But more importantly, what I would look at is can you automate it? Can you automate it? And then lastly, obviously, if it's neither important nor urgent, like I said earlier, that just means that we missed it at the top of the funnel and it needs to be totally eliminated.
So what do we do with all this information? Let me just kind of walk you through everything one last time. So number one, you're going to mind dump everything. You're going to get every task out of your head and onto paper or some kind of digital capture.
Secondly, you're going to run it through the Focus Funnel. You're going to ask all these questions in order. Can it be eliminated, automated or delegated? And you're going to take everything that came out of the bottom of the Focus Funnel and you're going to chart it out on the Eisenhower Matrix.
Now I know this seems like it's taking a ton of time, but really once you get in the flow of doing this, it should take less than 10 minutes, right? We're running through the Focus Funnel. We're asking can it be eliminated, automated, delegated. If it comes out the bottom of it, then that means you feel like in that moment that it should be used. And now we're going to take that batch of things. We're going to plop it onto the paper. I love, honestly, I love to print out the Eisenhower Matrix because I can see it and I can start to kind of hand write the things in on all four of the quadrants.
We're going to go through the Eisenhower Matrix. We're going to run things back through the Focus Funnel if we really need to. But at the end of that 10 minutes or less, you're going to be able to understand where you need to protect your creative energy, which is the next part of our what now—protect your creative energy, meaning you can schedule the high impact creative work during your peak hours. We've talked about this many times on the show before, so I won't go back into it now, maybe for another, we'll revisit it in a future episode.
But then you're gonna review and adjust. At the end of the week, see what worked, see what didn't. See what things you're like, you know what, I thought I needed to be the one to do it, but actually we could delegate it. Or you know what, I thought this was urgent and important. It turns out it was only urgent, not super important. And so we learn from that every single week, every single day, every single time you go through this Priority Method, you learn more and more about it.
So I have this Priority Method for you on the website. If you go to dustinpead.com/free, you can download this Priority Method framework from me. You can also grab the Time and Energy Audit, which is from Dan Martell. I just created a little bit better spreadsheet to use it. Also, my DO versus DUE framework is on there as well. It stops allowing the fake urgency to drive your schedule. So you can get all of those at dustinpead.com/free.
Listen, your creativity is your most valuable asset along with your time, right? So stop treating those things like they're unlimited and start protecting it like the finite resource it really is. The Priority Framework isn't about doing more. It's about doing what matters most and giving your best creative energy to the work that actually moves your business forward.
Remember, a shorter intentional list that you actually complete beats a long list that overwhelms you every single time.
If you want to dive deeper into the systems that protect your creative energy, go to dustinpead.com and connect with me there on the connect page or the contact page. You can also find me on social media at Dustin Pead. Your future creative self, well, thank you for reaching out. Trust us. We'd love to work with you.
Next week, we're going to dive into why your best ideas disappear and how to capture them. And I can't wait to share that with you on next week's episode of Creativity Made Easy. Have a great week.