Priorities

One of the things that I love most about Scrum is its relentless focus on prioritization.

It’s so central to the idea of Scrum that an entire accountability is dedicated to it.

Over the last year, I’ve leaned in to consciously using ideas from Agile and Scrum in my personal and professional life, beyond my Scrum Teams.

Which is why you haven’t seen much of me for a while. I’ve had some heavy things happening in my personal life that required me to prioritize them and put less important things on pause.

Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are that anything pushed my activity here and on LinkedIn off being my top priority.

I’ve been gone for nearly two months.

But I’m back now, and that helps me to clearly see something else about priorities.

They’re really fluid.

You make a decision, something urgent rises to the top of the list. You get it done, you get some feedback, it pushes something else to the top of the list.

Sometimes what is urgent really is more important than what is important.

But in the end, eventually the waters calm and you return to the routine you were in before. Maybe it’s a little different, but at least it feels safe again.

You all know that I’m the American in France. A stranger in a strange land. It’s nice, and I won’t go back to the US, but three and a half years in, this still doesn’t feel like home. I’ve just moved into a new apartment, so it feels even less homey right now.

But this - writing to all of you - this is the routine that makes me feel safe. Like home.

I’ll be back with something new next week, I’m excited to make y’all my priority again.

-Jeremy