The meaning of the word ‘priority’ was consistent for centuries — until World War II. During that time, so many contracts carried an A1 priority rating that the U.S. government had to invent A1A, then A1B, then AA. The system collapsed under the weight of its own labels, as the “top priority” became “priorities”. If three things on your list are flagged “urgent” right now, you know how that ends.

Moah and Cameron Henneke have been arguing about prioritization since Boomerang acquired GQueues in 2024. Cameron built GQueues, a task and project management system where every task carries a number, because he believes everything should be ranked. Moah started advocating to switch those numbers off since the week she got access — she works in piles; either something is a priority or it is not. In this episode, they dig into what the research says about prioritization, including a Nobel laureate’s case for “good enough,” the one situation where they agree ranking is worth the time, and why AI may have them reconsidering their stances altogether. Who comes out on top in the debate about “priority” vs. “priorities”? Listen to find out!

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Links from the show!

Ambidextrous organizations https://hbr.org/2004/04/the-ambidextrous-organization

Nobel winners more likely to be perfomers/into arts https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Arts-Foster-Scientific-Success-OCR.pdf

3M Post it notes origin https://www.invent.org/blog/inventors/art-fry-post-it-notes

Fuji Film vs Kodak https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/fujifilm-surviving-the-digital-revolution-in-photography-through-diversification-into-cosmetics/index.html

Got to-dos? Get GQueues! gqueues.com

Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com

Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com

When a workday goes badly, we blame the coffee or the sleep. Almost nobody blames the room. But the air quality, temperature, and noise around you have a measurable effect on how well you think and make decisions.

Alex and Moah recorded this episode with a CO2 monitor in the booth and watched the number climb while they started having trouble finding words.

Harvard's Joseph Allen put office workers in a controlled office and dialed the air quality up and down. Cognitive scores were 101% higher with enhanced ventilation, and dropped 50% at 1,400 ppm of CO2, a level plenty of bedrooms and conference rooms hit routinely. A modest rise in fine particle pollution made expert chess players 26% more likely to blunder. Students in dorms without AC performed 13% slower during a heat wave.

Air, temperature, and pollution have an ideal range no matter what you're doing. Everything else depends on the task. Alex and Moah get into why a 60-decibel air conditioner beats a 45-decibel conversation two desks away, what ceiling height does to a brainstorm, why open-plan offices backfired, and how to fix your space when you don't control the thermostat. Also: Moah's plan to monetize all of this with a scented candle.

This episode is dedicated to Ryeon, our editor, who made us sound better than we deserve to.

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Links from the show!

CO2 is a big deal https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26502459/

Temperature for health and productivity in offices https://www.osti.gov/biblio/886957

Colour of noise and work efficiency https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347958829_Spectral_content_colour_of_noise_exposure_affects_work_efficiency

Aromatherapy: effects on cognition and mood https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10808709_AROMAS_OF_ROSEMARY_AND_LAVENDER_ESSENTIAL_OILS_DIFFERENTIALLY_AFFECT_COGNITION_AND_MOOD_IN_HEALTHY_ADULTS

Chessmaster paper: Indoor air quality and strategic decisionmaking - https://dusp.mit.edu/news/how-indoor-air-quality-impacts-decision-making

Got to-dos? Get GQueues! gqueues.com

Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com

Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com

Everyone needs to learn to delegate effectively in the age of AI, even if you don’t manage any humans. AI agents will research the paper, write the draft, crunch the spreadsheet, just about anything you need, short of grabbing your coffee. So why does it still go sideways so often? In this episode, Alex and Moah reveal the ways delegating tasks to a machine are the same as delegating to a person — and the science that explains why most of us are bad at both. Research shows the CEOs who delegate well make 33% More revenue — yet 75% of top CEOs admit they're bad at this one skill.

Along the way, Alex and Moah dig into why we struggle to let go, like the psychology that makes your own work feel superior and the cognitive bias that mistakes long hours for good results. To help you level up your ability to delegate, they walk through the five levels of managerial delegation, the 1974 Harvard Business Review classic that asks "who's got the monkey?", and the military’s concept of "Commander's Intent". You'll leave with one concrete assignment: find the single task on next week's plate that only you can do, and hand off something else to a person or a machine. The hard part was never the handoff. It's the trust.

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Links from the show!

Gallup: Companies with CEOs who delegate better https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182414/delegating-huge-management-challenge-entrepreneurs.aspx

9 Tips to Delegate Effectively https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-to-delegate-effectively

Commander’s Intent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_(military)

Who’s Got the Monkey? https://internalmedicinefaculty.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2018/05/Whos-Got-the-Monkey-HBR.pdf

Got to-dos? Get GQueues! gqueues.com

Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com

Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com

*Correction: We misstated a statistic in the audio. Delegator CEOs had a 3-year growth rate that was 112 percentage points higher (1,751% growth vs. ~1,639% for low delegators.)