How to Prioritise as a Business Owner: The One Question That Cuts Through the Noise
If you finished last week feeling exhausted but with no honest answer to the question “what did I actually move forward?” — you’re not lazy, you’re not disorganised, you’re not lacking discipline. You just don’t have a filter.
How to prioritise as a business owner isn’t a time-management problem. It’s a filter problem. The founders I coach who feel busiest are almost never the ones getting the most done. They’re the ones with the fewest ways to say no to activities that were never going to matter.
This week’s podcast guest has the cleanest, most quotable filter I’ve ever come across, and she borrowed it from an Olympic rowing crew. Her name is Harriet Beveridge, she’s the co-author of Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? (three editions in), a keynote speaker, a comedian, and she just finished a Masters in neuroscience and psychology because she “had a bit of spare time.” Read that back.
The book tells the story of the 2000 Sydney Olympics coxless four and eight, when British rowing went from one gold medal in Atlanta (36th on the medal table) to gold. And the question they used to make every single training decision was this.
Will it make the boat go faster?
That’s it. Every meeting, every drill, every warm-up run, every altitude training camp, every kit choice, every rest day, everything got run through the filter. Will it make the boat go faster? If yes, do it. If no, stop.
The bit that startled me: they stopped doing things everyone else was doing. They stopped altitude training. They stopped warm-up runs. They spent less time on the water. Not because those things were bad, but because for their crew, in their boat, on their route to the podium, they didn’t make the boat go faster. Everyone else in the sport did them because everyone else did them. That’s not a strategy. That’s a habit dressed up as one.
Now imagine that filter running across your business this week. Every meeting on the calendar. Every marketing tactic you’re paying for. Every report you’re generating. Every 1:1 you’re holding. Every Monday morning stand-up you inherited from a previous company that only ran it because someone else did.
Will it make the boat go faster?
Nine out of ten founders can’t answer yes on more than half their week’s calendar. Once you can’t answer yes, you have the answer.
How to prioritise as a business owner using the bullshit filter
Harriet calls it, more directly, the bullshit filter. And it works because it strips two things out at once.
One, it strips out competitor noise. In the episode she talks about how easy it is to become obsessed with what everyone else is doing. “Should we be doing what everyone else is doing?” The bullshit filter cuts the comparison and re-anchors you on your own goal.
Two, it strips out autopilot. Autopilot is the invisible enemy of every founder past year three. Why do we have that meeting? Why do we write that report? Why are we using that marketing approach? “Is it genuinely going to make the boat go faster, or is it just because we’ve always done it? It’s Monday, it’s team meeting day. Well, okay, is it making the boat go faster or not?”
Learning how to prioritise as a business owner starts with catching yourself on autopilot. You don’t need a new productivity system. You need a filter you’ll actually use.
What’s on the other side of the filter (permission to dream)
There’s a companion question in Harriet’s work that I think is even more important, and it comes first. Before you can filter for what makes the boat go faster, you need to know where the boat is going.
That question is: wouldn’t it be amazing if…?
Not the SMART-goal version. The unreasonable version. The version where you dare to finish the sentence with something you’d normally cross out. Harriet’s own answer, twenty years ago, was “wouldn’t it be amazing if I saved the world AND was back in time for tea?” That AND is doing a lot of work. Because as founders we’re conditioned to accept the trade: business grows OR you’re happy. Team performs OR you get your time back. Revenue is up OR you take August off.
Harriet’s line, which I keep coming back to: “Wouldn’t it be amazing if you got amazing financial results AND your team performed really well AND you got your time back AND you created sustainable wealth?”
Read that as a real question, not a slogan. Because the moment you accept the AND is possible, you look at your calendar completely differently. Everything on it either serves that AND, or it doesn’t. The filter has something to filter for.
The should engine (name it and it loses power)
The other thing Harriet gave me is a name for the enemy. She calls it the should engine, and once you have the label you’ll notice it running everywhere.
I should be in that meeting. I should reply to that email. I shouldn’t take that afternoon off. I shouldn’t need decompression time. I should be able to do back-to-back calls all day.
Every “should” is a decision made for you by a version of business ownership that never asked what you wanted. And every “should” is dressed up as duty to make it hard to argue with. But when you strip it back, most of the shoulds don’t survive the boat-goes-faster question. You’re doing them because you feel you should, not because they move anything.
If you catch yourself using the word “should” three times before lunch, that’s your cue to open your calendar and run the filter.
(If you want a structured way to identify which activities in your business are pure autopilot and which are actually moving the boat, my Upgrade Audit is a focused 60 minutes that will surface them.)
What this looks like for you this week
How to prioritise as a business owner in the next seven days: one move, just one.
Print your next seven days of calendar. Beside every single meeting, block, task and standing commitment, write yes or no to: does this make the boat go faster?
Not “is it useful.” Not “did I promise someone I’d do it.” Not “is it my job.” Does it make the boat go faster?
Anything that gets a no, cancel or delegate this week. Don’t move it, don’t reschedule it, don’t keep it “just in case.” Cancel it. See what happens.
If the whole thing is uncomfortable, good. That’s the discipline working. It means you were quietly the bottleneck on your own week, and now you have a way out.
Stop being busy on bullshit. Ask the question. Cut what doesn’t survive it.
Harriet Beveridge is the guest on this week’s ActionCOACH Podcast.
P.S. Want a 5-minute honest read on which corner of your business isn’t currently making the boat go faster? Take the Score Card Quiz.