Knowledge Base · Time
How do I prioritise when everything feels urgent?
Sort the whole list before you start working it. Use the Eisenhower Matrix to separate what is urgent from what is important: do the urgent and important items, schedule the important but not urgent ones, delegate or automate urgent but unimportant tasks, and delete the rest. Feeling urgent is often a property of the request, not of the work itself.
When everything feels urgent, the problem is usually that urgency is doing the sorting for you. The book's answer is to stop and sort deliberately, using urgency and importance as two separate tests.
- Do: genuine crises and deadline-driven work that is also important.
- Schedule: important work with no immediate deadline. Give it a calendar block, or the urgent work will crowd it out again.
- Delegate: urgent work that does not serve your long-term goals, such as many interruptions, some meetings and much email.
- Delete: tasks that are neither urgent nor important, however familiar they feel.
The book's example is a landscaping business owner working 70 hours a week who could never find time to grow the business. Sorting his list on a napkin showed how much time went on tasks such as rescheduling a client appointment or collecting a minor piece of equipment, which his lead foreman could handle.
He delegated those Quadrant 3 tasks, blocked two hours on Tuesday mornings for marketing and business development and two hours on Thursday afternoons for financial planning, and within a few months had dedicated 20% of his week to strategic growth activities.
“If you don’t intentionally schedule time for the important, the urgent will always consume your days.”
Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 11
Sort your list in the free Priority Matrix
Related questions
- What is the Eisenhower Matrix, and how do I use it?
- What are "big rocks" in time management?
- How do I stop being reactive and make my calendar strategic?
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 11 (Time Management).