We all have those moments that are seemingly innocuous but for some reason got indelibly seared into our memory. A lot of mine are related to embarrassing shit that I did before I got old enough and wise enough to realise that five wines on a Wednesday wasn't cute anymore and had, in fact, never been cute.

I try to set the worst of recurring thoughts free whenever I can, but there's one clear memory I hold onto.

It was at some point in late 2017, I was about 32, almost finished with my MBA and, although I didn't know it at the time, almost finished with my big tech career too. I was sitting at my desk in Holborn Viaduct one morning when I received an email about prioritising at work.

The email suggested that we adopt a new system for prioritisation that ranked tasks on a scale from "medium priority", to "high", then "high plus". The idea was that nothing in the business was low priority. Some things were higher priority than others, sure, but nothing was "low" enough priority that you could allow yourself to stop being anxious about it for a moment.

This was around the same time that one of my favourite colleagues was getting booked in for an urgent surgery for a stress-related stomach ulcer. She told our manager which day she would be having the surgery and he replied "But the operation's in the morning, so you'll be back online in the afternoon, right?" Fascinatingly, this wasn't even in the top ten of reasons why that guy was one of the worst managers of all time.

That entire role was a clusterfuck of competing priorities and it was impossible to properly figure out what I needed to be doing on any given day and that's not an unusual situation to have found myself in. It's been a solid few centuries since Martin Luther laid the groundwork for fucking us all over by creating the foundations of the Protestant work ethic and the world has come a long way since then, but plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

The level of anxiety that worms its way into our bodies when we're overloaded with priorities and unable to see the trees for the woods is a special kind of pain in the general dystopia that late stage Capitalism has gifted us. We all have too much shit to do and too much stress to worry about.

I hate to add one more thing to your to-do list, but you shouldn't and you don't have to live like this, and if you want to actually get any of that shit done, finding a way to break that cycle and, quantitatively, determine what your actual priorities are needs to be - well, a priority.

Luckily for you, 2025 Milly is far better informed than 2017 Milly was (and in so, so very many ways) and I can help you get on top of the chaos and figure out what you actually need to be doing, right now, to really push your company forward.

Enter: The Relative Prioritisation Matrix.

Using a Prioritisation Matrix to nail resource allocation

In the best-selling of my four books, How To Write Your Strategy, I run through the full Strategy design framework that we use in all the companies we work with.

You start with a Mission (to solve a problem for a customer), you quantify how you're achieving that Mission (by setting OKRs), and your identify the work that goes into hitting those goals (by laying out Projects and their component Tasks), and then, finally, you manage the performance of everyone who is doing this alongside you.

In this guide, we're going to focus on the latter part of the Strategy, specifically the Projects and the Tasks, and show you the most simple way to choose which bits of work you need to complete first (and thus how to properly allocate your previous resources) by plotting everything onto a visual matrix.

The Two Axes: Impact vs. Effort

This matrix, which we call The Relative Prioritisation Matrix, is built from two axes.

Vertical 'y' axis

This measures the impact the Project will have on your ultimate objective - specifically, how much it moves the needle on your Key Result or Objective, which really is the most important thing to consider when you're trying to improve your resource allocation.

If completing a Project gets you significantly closer to the number identified in your Key Result, it goes high up on the Matrix. If it's just nice-to-have window dressing, it lands low down.

Horizontal 'x' axis

This measures the relative effort or cost required. It asks: "How easy is this thing to do?". We can substitute 'easy' for 'cheap' or 'quick' depending on what resource is scarcest for you.

If it's a quick win that doesn't sap your limited time or budget, it goes left to "easy". If it requires a Herculean effort, it goes right to "Hard".

Plotting your projects on this simple grid immediately sorts them into four beautifully clear categories:

Do First: easy and big impact (top-left)

These are the non-negotiable quick wins. They are easy to accomplish and deliver a big contribution to your goals. You tackle these first because they generate momentum, visible progress, and, ngl, an immediate shot of dopamine (you're welcome).

Do Second: hard and big impact (top-right)

These are your major strategic undertakings. They are hard, lengthy, or expensive, but they deliver a big, essential contribution. You commit to these next, knowing you'll need to break them down into smaller, owner-assigned, deadline-driven Tasks and you've got some dopamine from the first batch to power you through.

Do Third: easy and small impact (bottom-left)

These are the small things that are easy to do but don't move your main goals much. They can be good filler work for those brain-dead afternoons, but be warned: they become time-sinks if you let them.

Do Last (or Never...): hard and small impact (bottom-right)

These are the projects that are hard to do and make a tiny difference. Unless a truly compelling reason forces your hand, these are essentially someone else's problem. More often than not, that someone turns out to be no-one, so stop stressing about them.

This Matrix strips away the false urgency and manufactured anxiety of a "high plus" ranking.

It forces you to ask the key questions that truly matters for an ambitious business: Is this action the most efficient use of the limited resources I have to allocate? Will it actually drive my business forward?

If you can answer no to either of those questions, stop doing it.

Use the Matrix to focus only on the Tasks and Projects that directly contribute to the OKRs you've defined, ensuring every step you take is a productive one that's heading you toward your Mission.

If you want to chat more about any of this or about how we can help you design and implement a full Strategy for your company, give me a shout below:

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