How you know
You've had a decisive month and you couldn't say whose priority you were working to.
Something to say
“I've been moving quickly on what I assumed mattered. Can we check that against what you need?”
It's easier to spot this afterwards than at the time. Give it a week before you decide it isn't yours.
Two ways in
One is a habit. The other is one person.
Neither is the better one. Pick whichever matches the thing that is actually bothering you.
On your own
The habit, not the incident.
Speed in the wrong direction costs more than slowness, because it arrives looking confident and nobody questions it until later.
- Ask what the end state is, in somebody else's words rather than your reconstruction of it.
- Say what you're dropping before you drop it. Most of the damage here sits in the things nobody knew you'd stopped doing.
- Once a month, check the destination rather than the pace. Cheapest thing on this list. Also the one most often skipped.
With somebody in mind
The same friction, one person.
The person whose priority you were guessing at thinks they told you. They probably did say it, once, in a room with eleven other things in it.
- Ask that one person for the single most important thing, then ask what it beats. A priority with nothing underneath it isn't one.
- Say what you've been treating as the priority. If the two don't match, you'd rather find that out today than at the end of the month.
One of these, not all of them. And in your own words, because ours won't sound like you.
Where this sharpens
It lands hardest with two of the five.
Not because anybody is difficult. These are just the two who reach for something different first, at the same moment.
Which one is yours
You are reading The Driver. Is that actually you?
Ten situations, about three minutes, no sign-up. It tells you which of the five you reach for first — and which version of this page is yours.
Five readings
This plays differently depending on what you reach for first.
Pick the one that sounds most like you. Reading a dimension is not a claim that you are one.