“My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important, and you devote all of your time to those things and forget everything else.”
Forget, Not Deprioritize
From Mike Wilson’s The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison (2003), reported from a conversation with Jenny Overstreet about how Ellison managed his time. Overstreet’s approach was to track every obligation; Ellison’s position was that only a handful mattered and the rest should be dropped entirely.
Prioritization still keeps the deprioritized items around: lower on the list, but on the list, still tracked, still making you feel behind. Ellison says to forget, not to deprioritize. A forgotten task is not at the bottom of the list. It is not on the list. Other quotes on this site cover adjacent ground: Jobs on saying no to a thousand things, Collins on stop-doing lists, Drucker on posteriorities, Munger on the too-hard pile.