Value vs Risk. Long termp projects and decisions.
Value vs Risk. Understanding how to evaluate this within the big picture of workload and in terms of opportunity cost.
I ask your questions of value/risk for EVERY opportunity and decision since I am offered hundreds of opportunities to participate in new projects. It used to work, but not so much lately. Here's why: Often these projects are VERY important to the people asking, and they hope/think/insist that these things should be really important to me too. Most of these do not align with my areas of focus although some align with my life goals. I am inclined to think the value of those that align with my life goals are HIGH, but this might not be the best time to be moving on that life goal since I have other thing going on in my current areas of responsibility that shouldn't be dismissed to make room for this goal activity. The risk of not doing these things is usually ZERO. So, they are totally optional and might have value to me if aligned with my goals. BUT, since these could clearly take up 200% of my time, I have to ask something different -- it is not about risk of not doing it (that's zero) and its not about value in doing it (that is likely high for them, moderate for me). The value is RELATIVE to the rest of my workload and the things I'll have to say 'no' to in the future because I say 'yes' to this one. BUT, I don't know what the future things I'm going to have to say 'no' to ARE! So, I'm left deciding "how much available time do I want to have in the future for arriving interesting projects and will saying yes to this one decrease that time below my target" That is really hard to do across long time frames (I am often asked to give a talk 'next year' for example).
Any insight on this type of long term prioritizing would be great.