You can have ONE priority.

From the 1400s until the 1900s, "priority" meant one thing. The first thing. The most important thing.

It was singular by definition.

You couldn't have "priorities" any more than you could have "multiple firsts."
The language itself forced clarity.

Then the 20th century happened.
Complexity grew, and thus... so did the word priority.
Then the 21st century really made a mess of things.

Now we sit in planning meetings and casually list our "top 12 strategic priorities." (Twelve. Top. Things.)

We've weaponized the plural to avoid making actual choices and hard decisions.

"Everything is a priority" is a euphemism for "we haven't decided what actually matters."

And your team knows it.

They see the Q1 all-hands where leadership unveils the "critical priorities." They watch half of them vanish by Q2. They nod in the room. Roll their eyes in Slack.

Because when everything is a priority, nothing is.

But what if we banned the word “priorities” altogether?
From planning decks. Strategy docs. Our entire lexicon.

You can have ONE priority.

Per Month. Per Quarter. Per Annum. The time frame is optional, but the ruthless clarity is not.

Words matter.
So does focus. And momentum. And outcomes.

Imagine what might get done with more of those things, and fewer Latin-French-Eglish mashups pretending to be strategy.