New Word Alert: ‘Prioritivity’

“I’m so busy.”

How many times have you said and heard that this week? This month? For most of us, it’s the default status update, part weather report, part merit badge, and deeply ingrained habit. But “busy” is a weak metric. A hamster is busy running on its wheel all day and going nowhere. Your inbox keeps you busy. Social feeds keep you busy. Rearranging your desk keeps you busy. None of that guarantees movement toward what actually matters. And in a culture that treats busyness as a status symbol, it’s easy to confuse motion with progress. I’m certainly not the only one who has been talking about the busyness babble, as it’s been a growing trend for years. Here’s an article from 2018 that is just as relevant now as it was seven years ago: The Busy Culture of America

Enter the ‘busy’ upgrade buzzword social media loves: productivity. Time-blocking, efficiency apps, quantified mornings, there’s no shortage of hacks promising to help you do more in less time. I’m all for intelligent systems. But productivity, in the wild, has become a watered-down umbrella term. Done thoughtlessly, it optimizes volume, not value; it pushes you to do more things rather than the right things. That’s how you can end a “productive” week (often defined by plenty of to-do list items crossed off) feeling oddly unsatisfied. Even management conversations can be hazy on productivity without defining it, which, of course, is not the optimal environment for setting meaningful goals.

As an MBA professor, I spend a whole lot of class time focusing on organizational leadership and optimizing performance. Terms like ‘Quiet Cracking’ and ‘Task Masking’ are becoming a common thread in the conversation about how objectives are set in the workplace and the shifting landscape of AI, which is moving faster than managers can react. Simply put, the current work environment can render the traditional definition of productivity a guessing game. Whether it’s life or business, it’s tough to improve our aim if we don’t know where the target is.

The better question isn’t “How can I be more productive?” It’s “Am I productive on what matters most?”

That’s why I think a new word needs to enter our daily vocabulary: ‘prioritivity’, as defined by productivity aligned to your highest-value life priorities. Think of productivity as horsepower and prioritization as steering. Horsepower without steering puts you in a ditch faster. Prioritivity points the engine at the right road. (I’m not crystal clear on the process for getting a new word entered into Merriam-Webster, but I will report back with updates.)

We all get the same 168 hours per week, with no guaranteed tomorrows. If you truly want to maximize your time on the planet, the pre-work is clarifying what will set your future self up for success. Skip that step, and you become a world-class navigator on a ship with no destination—impressive skills, wrong ocean. Or, as the old expression goes: “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m making great time!”

Here’s the exit strategy: when you shift from productivity to prioritivity, saying no gets easier, distractions lose their pull. Before saying yes to things, think, “If this were tomorrow instead of next month, would I still agree to do it?” The goal is to produce more of the right things, work that compounds, relationships that deepen, and health that sustains you. (On the health part, I’m going with the theory that you prioritize sleep and daily activity to keep you at the top of your physical game.)  You stop collecting “busy” stories and start accruing evidence that your minutes are going where your values are.

Additionally, let’s acknowledge the shadow side: the compulsion to be ‘always on’ is its own trap, as described in this Harvard Business article: Let’s End Toxic Productivity. It burns down well-being and creativity while giving you the illusion of momentum. Prioritivity builds in rest and recovery by design, not as a reward you earn after collapse.

Four steps to start today

1) Identify your life priorities (not just work).

On one page, list the 3–5 areas that you believe will still matter to your 80-year-old self sitting on your front porch: Health/Fitness, Family/Relationships, Creative Pursuits, Financial Security, etc. There are no wrong answers; whatever is right for you. Be honest. If everything is a priority, nothing is. Put your Big 3 at the top of your notes app (or on a paper pad) where you’ll see them daily.

2) Audit your last 168.

For the next week, capture where your hours go (rough buckets are fine). At week’s end, total the minutes for each priority vs. everything else (email, meetings-that-could-be-emails, doom-scrolling, errands). That gap between intention and allocation? That’s your opportunity zone. It’s not a moral failing; it’s a design problem. (Worth mentioning, this is an exercise I do with BAR40 Fractional Solutions clients called the ‘Time Suck Calculator’, designed to clarify where the time goes and rein in those ‘busy’ hours that take us down the road to nowhere).

3) Design your Ideal Week like a CFO.

Open a blank calendar and budget time to your Big 3 first: non-negotiable blocks for workouts, family dinners, prioritized work tasks, etc. Treat reactive admin and miscellaneous tasks as discretionary spend that fills after the investments. Make the right thing easier and the wrong thing slightly annoying. Examples: put your phone on Do Not Disturb or Airplane Mode during study/quiet hours; park the phone in another room after 9 p.m.; set app limits for social media; use a basic kitchen timer for 25–50 minute focus blocks; lay out sneakers, water bottle the night before; keep the TV remote in a drawer and a book on the coffee table; batch errands to two set windows a week; reserve a library table or pick a regular walking route with a friend; during meals and family time, no screens on the table. These tiny guardrails reduce decision fatigue, so your priority blocks actually happen. Tools are fine; fences are better because they work when willpower doesn’t.

4) Run a weekly Prioritivity Review.

Create a 15-minute repeating calendar task on Friday titled ‘Prioritivity Review’  :

• What did I actually move for each Big 3?

• What specifically got in the way?

• What’s one tweak (delete, delegate, defer, or design a better fence) to protect next week’s plan?

If you can’t point to progress, you don’t need more activity or hours; you need a clearer handoff between priorities and your calendar.

For a bottom-line takeaway: Prioritivity isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing what matters. It recognizes that “busy” is not a badge of honor and that “productive” is only valuable when you’re producing outcomes that align with the life you want to build. Build in rest by design, then spend your energy by design. When you live this way, intensity stops masquerading as importance. The hamster wheel becomes a conveyor belt, with a destination you picked on purpose.