Know Why

Productivity Principle #4

This is part 3 of a multi-part series exploring the principles of personal productivity, with the goal of making it the last thing you’ll ever need to read about the topic. If you missed it, you can read part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here.

Knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing should seem pretty self-evident. Of course we know why we’re doing things, otherwise we wouldn’t do them! Right? Well, maybe. In my experience, most people’s live slowly start to fill up with obligations, whose rationale they either long ago or forgot, or never knew to begin with. That report that you create for your boss every Friday (that he never actually reads). That project you got assigned that’s eating your entire week, whose purpose you don’t really understand. That house chore that you do every single week without fail because that’s the way your parents used to do it. And so on, and so on…

Even those things whose “why” we do know, we don’t often think of consciously.

There are two reasons to know and think about why you’re doing the things you’re doing.

Knowing Why Helps to Prioritize

The first is that it helps you to prioritize what you need to do. And why is prioritization so important? Because, as we’ve seen, you’ll never get everything done. And so, you have a choice. You can either spend your life answering emails that will always be replaced with ten new ones, OR you can do the things that really matter.

And in order to understand which things really matter,  you have to understand WHY you’re doing things.

Every productivity book has its own version of using the why to determine your priorities. David Allen uses different distances from ground level. Stephen Covey has you write your own eulogy. Peter Drucker asks you to choose your priorities and your posteriorities.

As with everything else I’ve written so far, I’m going to try and slim this down with a quick exercise. Take a look at the list of things you need to do that you prepared back when we started this journey. Now, pull out the next ten things you plan to do and put them in the order that you think you will do them.

Finally, go through that list again, and for each item on your list, ask yourself, “why am I doing this?”

If the answer for one task is, “because it will help me achieve my life-long dream of being a concert cellist,” and the answer for another task is, “because when I was younger, my mom always yelled at me when I didn’t clean my room,” which one do you think should take priority? (Hint: your Mom still loved you even when your room was messy).

Understanding why we’re doing certain things is the quickest shortcut I’ve found for prioritizing the things that really mater. Our brains are really bad at prioritizing what needs to get done, but surprisingly good at prioritizing the reasons for doing them.

Knowing Why Helps to Motivate You

The second reason to know your why is for motivation. It’s not always easy getting started on things we know need to be done. If everyone could just look at their to-do list and spring into action, TikTok would have way fewer users.

There are a bunch of tips out there for how to stop procrastinating and get working, but the most effective is understanding why we’re doing things in the first place. Even the most dreadful task becomes bearable when you know why you’re doing it (assuming the reason is a good one).

Applying the Principle

This part is easy, because you’ve already done this. For every task on your to-do list, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” Based on the answer to that question, move that task up or down the list in terms of priority.

What Comes Next

If you came to this list looking for practical tips, things like “knowing why” and understanding the difference between efficiency and effectiveness may seem a little too philosophical. But, remember, I’m not giving you a system. I’m giving you guiding principles that are universal and that will work for everyone in all seasons of life, and that you can then adapt to whatever system best works for you.

That said, the rest of these principles are going to get a little bit closer to the ground floor of actually getting stuff done.