When Everything Feels Equally Important, Something Structural Has Shifted

A lot of people come to me saying they don’t know what to prioritize anymore.

They’re not frantic about it. They’re usually pretty calm when they say it. Sometimes feeling embarrassed, because prioritizing is something they’re typically good at.

When everything feels equally important, it’s usually a type of mental saturation. Every single thing feels like it matters the most, and because of that, nothing feels clearly actionable. 

This is not a personal shortcoming. It’s quite common. And it’s almost always a sign that the business has crossed into a different level of complexity - and the way decisions are held hasn’t adjusted yet.

Why prioritization used to be easier

Earlier in a business, prioritization is more intuitive. There’s less context to track fewer people involved, and not nearly as many downstream effects to consider.

You can make decisions quickly because the system itself is simple enough to support it. The feedback loops are short so you see the results of your choices fast, and can adjust as you go.

At that stage, prioritization feels like a skill. It is, but it’s a skill operating inside a pretty contained environment.

What actually changes as the business grows

As businesses grow, the system changes even if nothing has been formally redesigned. And let’s be realistic, who is redesigning foundational systems before they need to be? Growth means evolution, not stopping and redesigning to start again when ready.  

So, how do we know when the system needs to evolve? With growth, decisions start to interact with each other. One choice affects several others. Tradeoffs become harder to see and the cost of being wrong increases - even when the decision itself looks small on the surface.

At the same time, more people and processes depend on the decisions you make. Context and timing now matter more than ever. This is the point where intuition alone stops being enough. Most often, founders experiencing this assume it’s their fault… but it’s not. It’s because there is simply more to hold.

When everything starts to feel urgent

As the system you’re building and driving becomes more complex, your brain does something reasonable: it keeps more things open.

This means holding more options open. Resisting making a decision that closes doors too quickly. Your brain is trying to preserve flexibility, just in case. From the inside, this feels like fog or indecision. From the outside, it can look like overthinking. 

Structurally, it’s neither.

It’s a system that is asking you to make higher-stakes decisions without giving you a clear way to sort signal from noise. When you don’t yet have that sorting mechanism, everything feels like a priority by default.

Why common prioritization advice stops working here

Most prioritization tools assume decisions are mostly independent. They work when you can rank things cleanly, act on one, and move on to the next. Which, let’s face it, you already know how to do! It’s what has gotten you to this growth point. 

But regardless of which tools work for you, they don’t help when decisions are interdependent. And with a growing company, that’s exactly what happens. When one decision reshapes the context for several others, or when the “right” choice depends on factors that aren’t fully visible yet, you need a way to manage that complexity. 

An early sign this is happening is when prioritization stops working.

Most people’s instinct is to apply more effort and rush decisions just to reduce the discomfort of holding uncertainty. It can happen before you even know it. And as that goes on, you begin to see everything that comes up as urgent. So you turn to more productivity tools. But whether that creates initial movement or not, it always creates more work later because the underlying structure hasn’t changed. 

Speed can create relief, but it doesn’t resolve structural ambiguity. So the relief fades. 

What helps at this stage instead

Getting a better understanding of:

1. What kind of decisions you’re being asked to make right now, and

2. How they relate to each other

And this might feel like a bit of a blow… but to do these things you’ll need to find the patience to look at:

• which decisions keep resurfacing

• which ones are carrying more weight than they used to

• where uncertainty is coming from (without trying to eliminate it)

This kind of clarity can’t happen in the margins of a busy week. It requires consistent space and context over time. And often another perspective to help you see what you’re already holding. For some, this fresh POV is someone outside of work altogether. For others, it’s a trusted leader working alongside or a professional outside of their company. Regardless of which is your style, this must be someone who you trust. 

If this is where you are

If everything feels like it must happen all at once, take a breath and remind yourself:

1. You have built your business to the point where decisions need to be held differently than they were before

2. This is a good thing, even though it often doesn’t feel very good

3. Your business is in a transition moment, this is growth!

Noticing this without rushing to fix it is the first step toward finding a steadier way forward.