The pain-in-the-🍑 framework

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Welcome to The Thinker, a twice-monthly newsletter where I provide thought-provoking questions to help you cultivate a fulfilling and high-performing career.

Hi there!

It’s my last email of the year 😳. As the year winds down, December can feel like a whirlwind—packed with expectations, obligations, and endless to-dos. It’s easy to let life dictate how we spend our time and energy.

But what if we flipped the script? What if, instead of being the busiest time of the year, this was your chance to redefine how you approach your time and focus your energy?

Not all work is created equal. Choosing how to spend your time at work will literally make or break your career growth. Over the years, I’ve honed a framework to help uncover the high-leverage activities that truly move the needle.

So, without further ado, here are 3 questions and a real 🍑 of a framework to help you take ownership of your time.

1. What are allllllll the things I’m doing right now?

→ Where is my time going in terms of meetings?

→ Where is my time going in terms of activities?

Start with a time assessment. Look back at your calendar and to-do list to group your commitments into buckets. Some ideas: project-related work, recurring team/company meetings, admin tasks, 1-1s, or management duties.

2. How important are those activity and meeting types?  

→ Is the C-suite aware that you do them?

→ Are they impactful?

→ Are they a pain-in-the-🍑?

Now, rank each activity and meeting type as high, medium, or low in three categories:

• Visibility: How many people (and at what level) know you’re doing this?

• Impact: How much does it actually move the needle?

• Pain-in-the-🍑: A highly technical term I’ve coined for “work that’s really annoying.”

3. Where am I leaking time and energy?

→ Which activities should more people know about?

→ What should I stop doing?

Here’s where the magic happens:

a) Identify high-impact work that needs more visibility.

b) Pinpoint activities to drop—things no one cares about or notices.

c) Automate or delegate high pain-in-the-🍑 tasks whenever possible.

You’ve just built yourself a prioritization framework to optimize your career. By doubling down on high-impact, high-visibility work, you’ll create more value, save time, and (bonus!) feel way more in control.

Give it a shot, and let me know how it goes! Wishing you a fabulous end to the year and an epic start to 2025 🫶

Cheering for you, 

McKay