Most Important Things

The short list a person or a body actually works from — and, at the largest scale, the questions that any people must answer before its work means anything.

The instrument is small and severe. Out of everything that could be done, name the few that matter most, in order, and let the order govern the week. A list of forty is a wish; a list of three is a decision (Prioritizing · Top card · The Board · Critical Path). The canon carries the same discipline at two resolutions — the top one, and the top three — so that a person always knows the single next thing even when three are in flight.

Its force comes entirely from what it excludes. Anything not on the list is being consciously not done, which is uncomfortable and is the point; a body that will not say what it is declining has not prioritised, it has only listed (Stop · Waste · Narrow · Prune).

At the largest scale the canon means something else by the phrase, and the second sense is the more interesting one. The Most Important Things are the questions a people has to face: Who are we? Where are we? How did we get here? Where are we going? Why? What is the purpose, the meaning, the goal? Why is there so much suffering and injustice? What is good, and what is evil? What are the deepest things? What wisdom, principles and values actually cause people, societies and living systems to flourish? How do we cross from where we are to where we are going, and how do we rightly relate to ØNE and All (Who We Are · Where We Are · How We Got Here · Where We Are Going · Who We Are Going With · Why · Profound Questions · The one question)?

The two senses belong together, and their joining is the actual instrument. A body's short list is worth what it is aimed at; the great questions are answered, if at all, by what gets done on a Tuesday. In the beginning, the middle, the end and in all — ØNE (Alignment · Stacking Up And Aligning · Design To The Goal).

Also called: the top one · the top three · the most important things Stands on: Prioritizing · The Goal · Values Opens onto: Top card · The Board · Critical Path · Profound Questions · The one question · Who We Are · Where We Are · How We Got Here · Where We Are Going · Who We Are Going With · Why · Stop · Narrow · The Turn In play: the weekly Turn, where the short list is set; and the door, where the great questions are met for the first time Sources: Most Important Things (root page, stub, marked work in progress — the list of great questions) · Top One, Top Three (root pages, stubs) · lionsberg.wiki: Most Important Things Open: The root page holds only the second sense; the working short-list sense lives in Top One and Top Three and nothing joins them. · Several of the listed questions are framed as questions about specific claims elsewhere in the corpus rather than as universal questions, which mixes two registers on one list.