The Clarity-First Practice
Know what you want on paper, and prioritizing your time gets easy.
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 72%
Minshew's personal 'secret to profiting' is spending real time getting clarity on what she wants, because without it you can't know how to prioritize your time or which activities to accept and decline. She treats wants as ranging from the trivial ('make sure I have time to foster a dog in September') to the deeply professional, and insists all of them get named. Her method is concrete: write a lot of it down and spend a lot of time in reflection. The payoff is that once you know both what you want and what you don't want, you're far more likely to go and get it. It's a foundational practice that makes every other career decision — re-engaging, evaluating, quitting — easier to reason about.
Origin
Minshew credits this to her own experience of being directionless in her early career, when a lack of clarity left her lost after the State Department and McKinsey before she learned to define what she actually wanted.
Core principles
- 01If you don't know what you want, you can't decide what to say yes or no to.
- 02Wants span the trivial and the profound — both deserve to be named.
- 03Writing things down and reflecting externalizes wants so you can act on them.
- 04Clarity precedes achievement — knowing what you want makes getting it far likelier.
How to run it
- 1
Schedule reflection
Regularly spend time in reflection getting clear on what you want, treating it as a real activity rather than an afterthought.
- 2
Write it down
Put a lot of it on paper — personal and professional wants alike, from the silly and specific to the significant.
Pro tip Even a want as small as making time to foster a dog counts and belongs on the list.
- 3
Name the don't-wants too
Get clear not just on what you want but on what you don't want, since both guide where your time should go.
- 4
Prioritize from clarity
Use the defined wants and don't-wants to decide which activities to say yes to and which to decline.
In the wild
Minshew's single actionable tip: find someone you admire professionally and follow them on whatever channels they're active on, to absorb what they read, watch, and listen to.
→ You pick up the non-obvious inputs and habits behind their success — a small, concrete way to sharpen your own direction.
Common mistakes
Trying to prioritize without knowing what you want
Deciding what to say yes or no to is impossible without first defining your wants; skipping the clarity step leaves you reactive and scattered.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone feeling scattered or reactive who needs a foundation for prioritization and career decisions.
Not ideal for
People who already have sharp clarity and need execution tactics rather than more reflection.
From the transcript
“I spend time getting Clarity on what I want because it's hard to know ... which activities to say yes to and no to if…”
“I write a lot of stuff down I spend a lot of time in reflection and ... when you know what you want and what…”
From the episode
Kathryn Minshew: Crush Your Career, Beat Burnout, and Learn to Navigate the New Rules of Work
Kathryn Minshew