Should You Really Be Doing That? (Time Management)

How many of us start our day with a plan of everything we would like to accomplish only to quickly go down the rabbit hole putting out the day’s fires?  If that sounds familiar, this post is intended for you.  The main things I would like to get across with this post is the idea of setting up a system to assess (triaging?) your priorities and the importance of frequently utilizing that system to reassess your workload.  Along the way, I’ll also offer some thoughts on the related pieces which factor into time management.  Let’s start out by reviewing the 2×2 matrix below.

I. Neither

Why would you ever do anything in this quadrant?  If you have any tasks that fit in the other boxes, they should come before these tasks.  The only exception I might make to this would be if it’s late in a work day and I had enough time to knock something off of this list, but didn’t have anything from another quadrant which made sense to get started on.  That’s a pretty rare occurrence for me  as I can typically put together an agenda for an upcoming meeting in those ten to fifteen minutes.

Summary: Low Urgency + Low Importance = Low Value.

Ensure your time can’t be better spent before tackling these efforts.

II. Urgent

This is the trap folks.  This area includes the countless fires that pop up throughout the day that keep us from our planned activities.  These efforts are typically non-critical, but are presented as pressing.  In actuality they usually have time before they must be tended to.  This bucket holds what I consider to be  hard and soft deadlines.  Hard deadlines are those which relate to regulatory requirements and business critical activities like completing payroll activities on time.  Soft deadlines are those which are self-imposed or those targets that are set for you, but which do not have a real penalty for being missed. (There is certainly room for interpretation here.)  Hard deadlines are typically non-negotiable and should be looked at as such.  Soft deadlines should be viewed as negotiable and can often be changed with a bit of horse trading.  This requires that you are on top of your projects and is best handled in advance of any missed deadlines or other difficulties.  If you are four weeks out from a soft deadline and you recognize a resource conflict, take the conflict to management and ask them what they want to accomplish with the available resources.  If they ask for both, you will need to stand firm if you and your team believe the conflict is real.  Caveat: If the team has underperformed, management may be in the right to ask the team to up their commitment to bring the project back on schedule.

Summary: High Urgency + Low Importance – Typically much of the lower value work which is often treated as high value.  Be sure to constantly check to see if you are being dragged into this area when there is higher value work to be done.

III. Important

Now we are talking.  Items of high importance and lower urgency beg for quality.   These things matter to your organization and they don’t absolutely, positively have to get there today.  These items should be near the top of you to-do list and should always be rolling around in the back of your mind.  These things will be noticed when they’re completed, so make sure the results tell the story you want them to.

Summary: Low Urgency + High Importance – Make a name for yourself with these efforts as they are your long-term, high yield opportunities.  Just make sure you don’t put them before the next group.

IV. Both

It should be obvious why I place this box at the top of the heap.  These are your golden nuggets which not only have a near-term deadline, but also provide great value to the organization.  Never take your eye off these activities!  There is an ebb and flow to work which allows us to work some things in, but these tasks should always be kept top of mind.  If we can’t deliver on the things that are both urgent and important, our value as project managers will certainly be questioned.

Summary: High Urgency + High Importance = Do it now!  Do it well!

Usage

I think this model can be used both to better manage relationships both up and down in a reporting structure.   By explaining the way you use this to your leader, you should be able to gain some latitude in decision-making as they understand you are making a concerted effort to focus on the most critical efforts.  By providing positive results and a logical framework, you’re setting a foundation that your leader will trust.

I also think this is a useful guide for managers to teach reports how to rank their efforts.  It gives you an opportunity to share how you would expect things to get processed and it also offers shared language for discussing work prioritization.

Round Up

Here is the order in which I triage my efforts (with comments):

1. High Urgency + High Importance – Leading off all of the time.
2. Low Urgency + High Importance – Batting second.
3. High Urgency + Low Importance – Hitting third, but sliding up to second when hard deadlines come around.
4. Low Urgency + Low Importance – Discuss with management if these efforts truly bring  value to the firm.

Final Thoughts

One piece I’ve deliberately left off in this post is stakeholder management.  For simplicity sake I’ve assumed interests are aligned, as trying to bring in competing viewpoints would have overcomplicated this post.  I’ll tackle stakeholder management in a future offering.

To make real use of this post will require the commitment to consistently check your priorities.  You have to step back and ask yourself if the work you are doing is urgent or important and whether there is something else you should focus on.  If you do, I’m certain you’ll find your performance quickly improving.