Some phrases stick with me. I remember a movie line where a photographer was asking what view of a house was the best, and the homeowner said: “take them all.” The photographer responds, “more isn’t always better, sometimes it’s just more.” I am reminded of this almost daily. In my experience, I would affirm that many times “more" is worse.

I worked with a client recently that developed a request for information (RFI) to evaluate a partner. The RFI had everything they could want in a partner. The questionnaire was pages and pages long. The effort spent putting everything on the table was not matched by a similar exercise in filtering or prioritizing. They did not answer the question “What means the most to us in a potential partnership?” Much time is spent responding to the RFI by the partner and evaluating dozens of criteria by my client. Only twenty or thirty percent of the dimensions were truly impactful. Yet the team tried to cover everything spending lots of additional time.

Putting more ideas on the table is the perfect goal for a brainstorming exercise. No idea is filtered. A group comes together and collects every option. The group collects them all up, inspires one another, and thinks out of the box. A brainstorming exercise is creative and free-flowing. The best idea could come only after some of the most off-the-wall ideas have been suggested. Brainstorming is an area where more is better.

When I help teams put together a strategic plan, brainstorming is often the first step. Once we have gathered up the universe of possibilities, I propose we then prioritize and filter. We conduct an exercise that puts the most important or best ideas at the top. We focus as we begin to plan. We seek to answer the question “What 2-3 things describe what we want to accomplish this year? Next year? In five years?” Where will our time make the biggest impact?

This type of exercise is useful for an individual, too. It is tempting for us to leave our “to-do” lists with everything on them. We think to ourselves, “Don’t lose sight of something that is far down the list because we may eventually get to it." If you’re doing bullseye prioritization you know that you can only have so many priorities that fit in the dead center. Those middle ring items are potentially wasteful time stealers from your most important objectives. Your time matters and choosing to spend it on something is inherently saying “no" to something else.

In another situation, I was helping interview possible partners to fulfill a business need. My business partner in the organization suggested we gather up as many possible partners as we could to evaluate “the field of possibilities.” The field was large. Hundreds of possible partners. His initial thought was we need to short-list thirty or more possible partners. Although the list was shorter than “everything” I knew we needed a smaller list to do a good job. We needed to find some initial criteria to get us to fewer than five possible partners with whom we could go deeper, talk to references and get hands-on with their offering.

More is not always better. Consider whether “more" adds the value it should. As you work through your priorities, ask yourself if more is better. You can benefit from filtering out some of the marginally important items to enhance your impact with the time you dedicate.