Ruthless prioritisation: Laura Mae Martin's productivity system for executives

Executive overview

Most people treat prioritisation as reordering tasks. Real prioritisation means cutting genuinely good things to protect great ones — even when you technically have time, because time and energy are not the same.

Laura Mae Martin, Google's executive productivity advisor, has spent eight years developing a practical system built on weekly planning rituals, structured list funnels, and deliberate downtime.

If you aren't saying no to good things, you aren't actually prioritising.

The Sunday planning ritual

• Look back and look forward: review what worked last week before planning the next
• Walk through each day as "future me" — spot energy mismatches and missing breaks
• Use a list funnel: start from a master dashboard, narrow to the week, then to each day, then hour by hour
• Planning the night before what you'll do tomorrow significantly increases follow-through
• The Sunday session takes around 10 minutes and anchors the whole week

The list funnel system

• Master list acts as a dashboard of everything across all life areas — calls, errands, computer tasks, personal items
• Group by context (calls together, errands together) so you can batch by energy or location
• Narrow to a weekly list, then a daily list, then hour-by-hour blocks
• A capture list — fed by voice throughout the day — collects every passing thought before it's lost
• Items that don't get done flow back to the master list; nothing falls through

Saying no without losing relationships

• Cut good things to protect great ones — this is the core discipline, not a last resort
• Say no quickly: slow nos leave people hanging and waste their time
• Prepare reusable phrases that decline gracefully while preserving goodwill
• Offer an alternative resource when turning down a request
• Follow up after declining — a brief "how did the event go?" keeps the relationship warm

Protecting power hours

• Most executives do their best heads-down work at a specific time of day — then schedule meetings over it
• Block one or two uninterrupted windows per week aligned to your natural energy peak
• Audit every recurring meeting: "Would you sign up for this tomorrow?" — if not, cut or shorten it
• Trimming 10 meetings by 15 minutes each creates meaningful recovered time across a fortnight
• White space in the calendar creates white space in the mind — a prerequisite for strategic thinking

Boundaries and the "gift from past you"

• Define specific working boundaries explicitly — vague intentions don't hold
• Communicate preferences in your email signature or a personal "how to work with me" guide
• The night-before routine is a gift to morning you: pre-pack, set coffee, lay out clothes, clean the kitchen
• No-tech Tuesday: one evening per week from dinner to next morning, no screens — people report being more productive on Wednesday as a result

Email as laundry

• Never open the inbox and act on one item at a time — that's folding one shirt and walking it upstairs
• Batch all email processing: read in one run, respond in another, matched to available energy
• Marking something unread is throwing wet pants back in the dryer
• Reserve low-energy windows (meeting ends early, commute) for reading; protect power hours for real work

Using AI and hotspots

• Scan your to-do list for tasks AI can start — templates, drafts, summarising, creative assets
• AI is strong on pulling information; personal judgement is still required to act on it
• State dependency: train your brain by doing specific tasks in specific locations consistently
• Designate "not spots" — places where you never work, so your brain has genuine recovery zones