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Speaker 1: Whatever happened to that huge game changing project you started

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Speaker 1: working on last year, or the idea that you had

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Speaker 1: a couple of months ago. If you've got an ever

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Speaker 1: lengthening list of unfinished and abandoned pursuits, it's probably because

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Speaker 1: you're not prioritizing the correct time horizons. As at Lassian's

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Speaker 1: head of R and D, Dom Price, calls them, the

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Speaker 1: first horizon is the short term answering emails, making sales calls,

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Speaker 1: delivering final products, anything that gives you a sense of

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Speaker 1: immediate gratification. And while wins in this first horizon are crucial,

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Speaker 1: they're also a bit of a trap. After all, when

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Speaker 1: immediate gratifications available, it's hard to resist. But if anything

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Speaker 1: truly special is going to happen, it's going to take

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Speaker 1: the discipline pursuit of longer term goals. So what is

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Speaker 1: dom system for not just attending to the immediate needs

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Speaker 1: of horizon one, but also ensuring he's planting seeds for

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Speaker 1: horizon two and three projects over multiple months or even years.

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Speaker 1: My name is doctor amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist

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Speaker 1: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this

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Speaker 1: is how I work a show about how to help

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Speaker 1: you do your best work. On today's my Favorite Tip

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Speaker 1: episode where you go back to an interview from the

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Speaker 1: past and I pick out my favorite tip from the interview.

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Speaker 1: In today's show, I speak with Dom about how he

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Speaker 1: applies the three horizons framework to prioritizing his time and work.

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Speaker 2: My goal is to minimize time horizon one. We have

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Speaker 2: nine thousand Atlasians who can do immediate gratification. Really well,

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Speaker 2: there's no point me doing that. I like it because

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Speaker 2: you get that kick, right, you get the adrenaline kick,

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Speaker 2: and you get all the all the courts on, and

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Speaker 2: you get all that and you're like, oh, the euphoria,

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Speaker 2: and then it flops, you fall off the Cliff's pointless

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Speaker 2: for me. So I focus on two in time horizon

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Speaker 2: two and three, and then I have to be really

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Speaker 2: clear that there's significantly more volatility in three. So well,

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Speaker 2: that means is if I'm doing something this week that

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Speaker 2: I don't think it's going to pay back for three

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Speaker 2: or six months, the chances are it might not. So

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Speaker 2: the great thing about immediate gratification is it not an

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Speaker 2: is it immediate? It's highly likely, right, we know when

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Speaker 2: we do that thing it's going to produce a return,

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Speaker 2: whereas there's a holder of stuff, and I think I've

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Speaker 2: got slightly better over time at honing that. But I'm like,

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Speaker 2: it's not a game of certainty, it's a game of confidence.

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Speaker 2: So I'm like, I'm confident that that make makes sense.

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Speaker 2: Right when you message me the other week and you're like,

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Speaker 2: i'd look to have another chat, I haven't got something

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Speaker 2: that says I am certain that this will happen, and

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Speaker 2: here's what will happen off the back of it. I'm like,

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Speaker 2: I'm confident I'll enjoy chat with Amantha, and I'm confident

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Speaker 2: there'll be a good conversation, and I'm confident that she's

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Speaker 2: got a really self aware, smart audience. All listen to it.

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Speaker 2: There you go, right, And so it works on degrees

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Speaker 2: of confidence, and then if those degrees are high enough,

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Speaker 2: then we plant the seed. Then then the job. And

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Speaker 2: this is the important bit about working in time Horizon

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Speaker 2: two three. For anyone that is anyone a strategy or

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Speaker 2: a longer term thing, enroll is how much you nurture.

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Speaker 2: So for every seed I plant, I have a rule

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Speaker 2: that in the next quarter I have to carve out

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Speaker 2: some time to nurture that seed or find someone to

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Speaker 2: nurture it for me, because otherwise I plant all these

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Speaker 2: wonderful seeds and I wonder off go and doing my thing,

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Speaker 2: and I come back a few months later, there's no

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Speaker 2: forest there. There's a whole lot of dead seeds. So

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Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, either if I go and plant all

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Speaker 2: those seeds and I get really carried away and plant

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Speaker 2: all these ideas, either I nurture them or I have

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Speaker 2: to find someone to nurture them for me, right otherwise

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Speaker 2: they're down the vine. And so that's just an approaches

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Speaker 2: I do. I go sort of three year plan to

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Speaker 2: one year time horizon, which is my three year plans,

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Speaker 2: like forty percent for Deelty's a painted picture, it's not

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Speaker 2: even written words. Right. My one year is here's what

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Speaker 2: the outcome looks like, and is still quite a stretch goal.

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Speaker 2: And then quarterly is a little bit more transactional for

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Speaker 2: the team to give them those benchmarks. But you know

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Speaker 2: that enables us to go. If we're doing this in

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Speaker 2: Q one, we've already built a plant for next year.

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Speaker 2: If we're planting seeds in Q one, we need a

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Speaker 2: planning Q two and Q three to nurture those seats.

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Speaker 2: So rather than going doing more seed planting, how do

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Speaker 2: we turn Q two and Q three into nurturing.

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Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this tip from Dom, I recommend checking

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Speaker 1: out my full interview with him, which you can find

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Speaker 1: a link to in the show notes. If you're looking

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Speaker 1: for more tips to improve the way that you worked,

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Speaker 1: I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool

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Speaker 1: things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging

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Speaker 1: from software and gadgets that I'm loving through the interesting

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Speaker 1: research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork

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Speaker 1: dot co. That's how I Work dot co. How I

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Speaker 1: Work is produced by Inventium with production support from dead

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Speaker 1: Set Studios. And thank you to Matt Nimba who does

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Speaker 1: the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound

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Speaker 1: so much better than it would have otherwise. See you

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Speaker 1: next time.