From [[The Great CEO Within, Matt Mochary]]: > In startups, fires never cease to burn. One of the most common complaints I hear from CEOs is that on a day-to-day basis they seem to have infinite things to do, yet weeks will go by and they don’t feel like they have accomplished anything. This is the result of getting bogged down with the small immediate things and losing track of the important long-term ones. > > The Top Goal framework will help you fix this. Greg McKeown, who wrote a phenomenal book on productivity called [Essentialism]([[Essentialism, Greg McKeown]]), boils this down to one key concept: **Schedule two hours each day (ie- put an Event in your calendar) to work on your Top Goal only. And do this every single work day. Period.** This is a very tactical version of [[The main thing is to make the main thing the main thing]]. Similar ideas are echoed by [[Make Time, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky(annotated)|Make Time, Jake Knapp]] (concept of "Highlight") and [[Deep Work, Cal Newport|Deep Work, Cal Newport]]. It's surprisingly straightforward but also surprisingly hard to follow (similar to "Talk to your users"). The small tasks, small meetings all have an allure - very little ambiguity! Quick dopamine! So in a way, this advice is a [[Sermons get you closer to your ideal self|sermon]]. When I didn't follow the Top Goal rule, what I would find is that my day would run away from me, and I would work into the night (in a much less effective way). #published 2025-01-16