Warren Buffett and Why ‘Pretty Important’ is an Enemy of ‘Most Important’

I’ve mentioned “not to-do” lists before, but I recently came across a story about Warren Buffett where this concept came up again in a somewhat surprising way.

In a conversation with his pilot, Buffett asked him to come up with a list of his top 25 career goals. Once he had that list, Buffett then asked him to circle the 5 most important items on the list. After the pilot had his top 5 circled, he confirmed that these would be his top priority. Buffett followed up by asking him what he was going to do with the 20 items he didn’t circle. The pilot’s response was that he would indeed focus primarily on his top 5, but since these others were still important, he would also work on them intermittently, whenever he had the chance. Buffett’s response was, No, the ones you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Costs list. No matter what, they are to get no attention from you until you’ve finished your top 5.

His response may seem quite strong, but it reminds us that sometimes the biggest enemy to the most important things in our lives are not the things that are least important, but the things that are pretty important.

Unlike things that aren’t important at all, spending our time and energy on things that are pretty important is easy to justify. Yet, we can have so many pretty important things going on that they end up getting in the way of actually doing those things that are most important. Because the key to doing what’s most important is focus. And focus is something that cannot exist when we’re trying to do too many things—even when those things are pretty important.