Reclaiming Your Power: Priority ONE

Week 3 of POWERful February. Your calendar reveals your actual priorities

Author

Jen Phillips
February 17, 2026

Hi it's Jen,

Let me guess.

You started 2026 rarin’ to go with a clear list of “Must Dos”. You wrote them down, sent the Slacks, set the vision. Everyone nodded.

Enter February.

Maybe your calendar is starting to drift. Your “Must Dos” buried under your urgent “Life is in Sessions”. Pressed under the weight of the “got a seconds” and “let me run something by yous.”

You're not disorganized. You're not undisciplined. You're not failing.

But you are feeling the pressure of 100 things to do and the capacity for…well…less than that.

And you know, deep down, that prioritization is actually the only way to win.

But it’s a muscle that needs reps daily. Let’s work it out, shall we?

In today's issue:

Default

Every decision you make costs you something.

Not metaphorically. Neurologically.

Research on entrepreneurs and decision fatigue is consistent and alarming: cumulative decision load — the hundreds of micro-choices you make before lunch — degrades judgment, accelerates hesitation, and produces emotional overwhelm.

Not because you're weak.

That's just how brains work.

Even very impressive ones.

CEOs and startup accelerators flag "too many decisions without clear priorities" as a core driver of poor strategic choices — and confirm what you might suspect. It’s not a talent gap. It's a prioritization gap.

Where it gets insidious for founders and senior leaders specifically, we’re driven to complete things. But we may default to … completing the wrong things.

Plus, your day probably doesn’t belong completely to you.

You're not just making your own decisions. You're someone people escalate to when they can't make theirs.

That means your default state is carrying the load of an entire organization's unresolved options. And probably some family craziness. In your brain. On any given Tuesday.

And when the time comes to make a strategic adjustment, on top of all the other “stuff”.

You’ve got a perfect recipe for drift.

Ambition

But when prioritization is an actual practice and not just theory?

You hold time for the few things that really matter. And they're tied to needle-moving outcomes — the results that will actually matter this quarter, the ones that would make you say "yes, we moved the business forward" at the end of March.

Everything you do gets run through a simple filter:

Does this serve or steal from my priorities?

Done right, your calendar reflects your priorities and limits time spent on non-needle moving work. You’ve got a daily ritual to confirm the TOP priorities, and your primary objective is to get those things done every day. And weekly, you scan for drift.

And here's the part that sounds radical but isn't: You aren’t shy to use the complete sentence

“No.”

Not "no, but here's a better time." Not "no for now." Just a guilt-free, no worry, “No.” 

Because you've done the work of defining what the “rightest” work is. So declining something that isn't a priority isn't a personality flaw. It's a power move.

The research on prioritization frameworks — Eisenhower Matrix, Ivy Lee Method, Warren Buffet’s “Two List” technique, and beyond — points to the same truth: a short, ruthless list isn't a constraint. It's a success “Must Have”.

In other words, prioritization is your top priority.

Founders who protect their capacity for the “rightest” work make better hires, better bets, and better calls in the moments that matter.

And when it clicks for the leaders I work with, it’s incredible how quickly momentum builds.

And that’s an ambition that your Future Self would get behind.

Pass it on: forward this email to a founder or leader who needs to stop the drift.

GO | DO

Estimated time: 30 - 45 minutes | Estimated energy: minimal

This week, check your priorities

True North Rising (15 minutes)

Review the initiatives you defined as the focus for this quarter. Revenue milestone, product decision, key hire, organizational shifts — whatever constituted "the rightest work."

They’re the true north on your compass. Every request you prioritize needs to move you in their direction.

Pro-tip: running EOS? These are your Rocks. 

Audit for Drift (15 minutes)

Pull up last week's calendar. Keeping your Q1 True North in mind, honestly calculate: what percentage of your time actually went toward the strategic work? What went to noise?

One column, no judgment — just data.

Then reclaim your time: what comes off the calendar this week to make room for what matters?

Tomorrow’s TTT (3 minutes, daily)

Make your final “end of day” action to define tomorrow’s Top Three Things. Not a task list. Three outcomes. Things that would count as progress if you achieved them. They should ladder up to your True North focus, and will be your “if nothing else happens, these will” outcomes.

This is a riff on the Ivy Lee Method, circa 1918. It still works today because human attention hasn't changed much.

The benefit? You protect your best-hour brain for the highest-leverage work, and start each day with clarity.

Get In There

📊 Subscribe to The New Ambition for instant access to the complete subscriber vault: healthy leadership tools, templates, and frameworks updated weekly with resources shaped by subscriber feedback.

🆕 NEW to The New Ambition? Don’t miss the first two newsletters in the POWERful February series. Week 1 (The Power of Ownership) and Week 2 (The Power of Decisiveness) are designed to help you reclaim your considerable power, little by little, every week.

Work With Me

If you're all the way down here thinking, "I genuinely don't know what my rocks are right now", that’s not a time management problem. That's a clarity problem. The Success Options Prioritization™ Sprint is designed to fix exactly that. Let's talk.

When leaders model radical prioritization, something shifts for the whole team. Permission spreads. The culture of "yes at all costs" starts to crack — and more of the needle-moving rocks move.

That's not just a personal win. It's how work actually changes for the better. Better results. Better ways of achieving results.