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Prioritization Frameworks Textbook

A free, self-paced textbook in 7 chapters. Read a chapter, then drill it with the 216 companion flashcards using spaced repetition.

7 chapters · 216 cards · Updated

Chapters

  1. 1Foundations: Why Prioritization Is Hard and What Good Looks Like

    Prioritization is the discipline of deciding what deserves attention first when time, energy, and resources are limited. It is hard because everything can feel important in the mom...

  2. 2Frameworks for Comparing Options

    Frameworks replace debate with comparison. The Eisenhower Matrix sorts work by urgency and importance to clarify what to do, schedule, delegate, or eliminate. RICE scores ideas by...

  3. 3Daily and Personal Practices

    Personal prioritization is choosing what work deserves your best energy instead of reacting to every request equally. Several lightweight routines encode this. The 1-3-5 rule commi...

  4. 4Flow, Capacity, and Constraints

    Prioritization does not happen in isolation from how work actually flows. Little's Law states that average lead time equals work-in-progress divided by throughput. The implication...

  5. 5Biases, Traps, and Anti-Patterns

    Even good frameworks fail when human biases dominate. The HiPPO problem — "Highest-Paid Person's Opinion" — emerges when prioritization defaults to seniority rather than evidence....

  6. 6Strategic Alignment, Roadmaps, and Discovery

    Strategic prioritization aligns work with longer-term advantage, not just short-term busyness. The McKinsey three-horizons model divides effort into Horizon 1 (protects current bus...

  7. 7Decision Discipline, Shipping Cadence, and Portfolio Lenses

    Decision-making discipline is itself a form of prioritization. Reversible-versus-irreversible reasoning says move fast on cheap-to-reverse decisions (Type 2, in Bezos's framing) an...

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