The 2-3 Moves That Actually Move the Needle

Earlier in my career as a manager, I worked with someone who was, by any measure, exceptional. High capacity, relentless drive, genuinely motivated by making things better for the people around her. She was the kind of person you want on your team.

And every few months, without fail, she would hit a wall.

It did not announce itself dramatically. From the outside, everything looked fine — she was rocking it, handling everything, keeping all the plates spinning. But I started to notice a pattern. She would get a little quiet for a couple of days and then, eventually, it would end in tears.

After it happened enough times, I could see it coming before she could. The quiet days were a flashing signal.

The Problem Was Never Capacity

The issue was never that she could not handle the work. She absolutely could. The issue was that she was trying to handle all of it at once, with equal urgency, and no clear sense of what mattered most right now.

So the saying goes, “When everything is a priority, nothing is”.

When nothing is, the mind does what minds do under that kind of pressure. It starts spinning, scanning the list, jumping between tasks, and slowly exhausting itself trying to keep track of everything that is not getting done.

That is not a performance problem. It is a focus problem and happens to be one of the most common challenges I see for capable leaders across every sector I work in.

What We Did Instead

When she would hit that wall, we would sit down together and do something simple. We would pick three things.

Not three things from the list — THE three things. The ones that actually needed to move right now, and nothing else.

The conversation was collaborative. Most of the time, she already knew what the most important things were. She just needed someone to help her say them out loud and give herself permission to set the rest down. When she was too deep in the overwhelm to see clearly, we would look for whatever was closest to revenue, or closest to the core mission, and start there.

It always brought relief. Not immediately — there was usually a beat of resistance, a moment of "but what about everything else?" And then, almost without exception, her shoulders would drop and she would exhale. Because the list had just gotten manageable, and she finally knew where to put her energy. Once the three things were moving, the next step would reveal itself.

I use this same method on myself

When I am working on too many things at once, everything slows down. Not because I am not capable of the work, but because the brain does not actually multitask. Our brains just switch rapidly between tasks, and every switch costs something important, like clarity, momentum, or the sense of actually finishing something.

Bringing it back to the two or three things that really matter is not a productivity trick. It is a reset. It is the difference between motion and momentum.

What This Looks Like for the Leaders I Work With Now

The leaders I work with are running organizations, not just managing their own task lists. The stakes are higher, the lists are longer, and the pressure to keep everything moving is constant. But the underlying problem is the same one I watched play out with my team member years ago: too many priorities is the same as no priorities, and the antidote is always the same.

Find the two or three moves that will actually create traction right now. Do those. Let the rest wait.

This is easier said than done when you are inside the work and cannot see it clearly, which is exactly why an outside perspective matters. Not because the answer is complicated, but because it is hard to see your own list the way someone else can.

Most leaders already know what their top priorities should be. Sometimes they just need someone to sit across from them, ask the right questions, and help them say it out loud.

If that is where you are right now, a free 30-minute coffee chat is a good place to start. No agenda, no obligation — just a conversation.

Melissa Meinke Krueger is a Brand and Business Strategist with corporate, B2B, and non-profit experience. She helps leaders find freedom from complexity and take the 2 to 3 focused actions that move their work forward.

Your business. Prioritized. Organized. Activated.