Managment Talks

Distinguish between the urgent and the important U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower is quoted to have said: “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” Most people fail to manage their tasks adequately not because they are incapable of it, but because they don’t know how to prioritize. We have a tendency to focus on urgent activities - such as returning phone calls and responding to emails - but don’t leave enough time to focus on the truly important tasks. This way, we are simply keeping our head above the water, firefighting through our to-do lists, but not really progressing toward our goals. Take a good look at what it is you’re trying to accomplish, and how you and your team can get there. Once you dedicate some time to this, it will become clear to you which tasks are truly important. Dividing your to-dos into the ‘Important’ and ‘Less Important’ categories can help you keep your focus on advancing your goals. Choose your most important tasks The most important tasks are the ones that you should get done before anything else. They’re the reason your projects are advancing, why you’re getting closer to your goals. Decide when you’re writing your list what these tasks are, and prioritize ruthlessly during the day to make sure they get done. Use a visual way to prioritize your most important tasks - for example, place them at the very top of your list. It can also help to break down your projects into bite-sized tasks, and completing 5 to 7 of these tasks daily. By not overwhelming yourself, you make it more likely to actually complete the items on the list and advance to your goals. Focus on single tasking There’s power in doing each task on your list as if you’re doing nothing else. Give your full concentration to each of the tasks on your list. The benefits of single task focus are undeniable. For one, you’ll become better at anything you do, by pure virtue of you giving your full attention to what you are doing. You will become more effective at work, and the benefits of single tasking may even overflow in your personal life. Creating the right to-do list Everything starts with being able to write down (read: get out of your head) the tasks that need to be done. There is a right way and a wrong way to write down your tasks. So what does the right to-do list look like? Actionable: Start each task with a verb. Instead of writing out a task that says ‘bills’, have a task that says ‘pay the internet bill’. Using a verb will make it easier to take that action when the time comes. If you simply write a noun on your to-do list, you might forget what you actually have to do about that task. Similarly, your team might not understand what you mean if a shared task is not actionable. Flexible: It’s important to stay flexible and respond to change as it happens around you. That’s why you shouldn’t schedule your tasks down to the minute. Instead, your to-do list should reflect things that need to get done "this week" or by a certain deadline. Sometimes, things that are out of our control come up and we need to attend to them right away, like an urgent customer request. But don’t confuse being flexible with getting distracted from your to-dos! Don’t schedule your time to the last second. Instead, leave some leeway for possible deviations from the list. (Next week we will deal more with why there’s power in flexibility.) Does not include the obvious: We’re sometimes tempted to put every little thing we might do in a day on our to-do list. Of course, this will result in more items crossed off the list, which will really make us feel better about how ‘productive’ we are. Really, you should only be writing down tasks that you wouldn’t get around to unless they’re written down. “Create analytics report” is one of them; “check analytics numbers” isn’t. When you’re faced with two tasks that you’ve given the same level of importance, your brain will always choose the simpler one. So if we put every little thing we do on our lists - let’s say, check email - it would certainly look like we’re getting a lot of stuff done. But, in fact, we’re regally procrastinating. You also shouldn’t write down tasks if it’s faster to just do them. For example, you can reply to a quick email in less time than it takes to write down a task for it. Keeps a history of completed tasks: It’s nice to revel in how much you did on any given day, or keep yourself honest about how little you got done. Either way, it’s a good idea to keep a record of what you did, and not just so you can improve your practices and become more efficient. A full history of your completed tasks will save you time when you need to find certain info about what work was done pertaining to a certain project, when was the work done and whether it was completed before or after another task, or if you need to find information about what exactly was done and why.