For the past few weeks I have been feeling overwhelmed with more tasks
than I can fit into a harried schedule. Granted, I confess to living on
the edge of taking on too many commitments. At the moment, however,
lots of project deadlines combined to conjure up a perfect storm on my
calendar.
I advise many senior managers who live in this state perpetually.
They could clone themselves three times over and still not get to the
bottom of their "to-do" list. So how do you make sure that you get the
most important tasks done?
Obviously, you need a strategy, and the first step is to avoid the
temptation to take care of the easy tasks first. I know, it's appealing
to harvest the low-hanging fruit; it makes us feel like we are making
headway. But when we follow that course, we carve out too much of our
day on the inconsequential and postpone the vital.
That particular red flag ought to be waving all over your daily
email. Email conducts a tyranny of the urgent. Remember that lots of
questions get answered, and problems resolved, with the space of time.
Better yet when they don't require your energies to reach that happy
conclusion.
T-Bone Burnett, the talented music producer, gave me a valuable
piece of advice once. I guess it would be more accurate to say he
passed along some wisdom. A friend challenged him to stop reading a
newspaper for 6 months. "You will pick up the newspaper in half a year
and discover that you are right in step with the news cycle." T-Bone
tried it, and learned a valuable lesson, so he gave me the same
challenge. Over my "fast" from the news media, I realized how much I
operate in a bubble of artificial urgencies. Don't get me wrong,
information has its own value. But we must learn to use information as
a tool for our agenda, rather than allow information itself to set our
agenda.
I highly recommend, then, that you address your most important tasks
early in the day, and if you have time later in the day, knock off the
less critical items on your list. If you can pull it off, try not to
set a meeting or phone conference before 11:00 am. Block off that part
of your schedule to take on the activities that you actually deem
"urgent."
In that vein, I walk senior managers that I mentor through a simple
exercise. It is common for their schedule to be filled with a string of
internal management meetings, so much so that they don't get to the
important small things that often have big consequences. So I ask the
managers to pull out their datebook and talk me through their previous
month. I ask them to identify the purpose of each meeting or activity
on their calendar, and on a scale of 1-10 rate how important the
activity was to the mission of their organization. In other words, are
they spending time on things that really matter. In most cases,
individuals are surprised how much of their calendar time is misaligned
to the goals they want - or need - to accomplish. The next stage of
this exercise is to vet future appointments and commitments with a more
strategic screen.
Aligning your calendars to your big goals assumes that you have set
the right goals, of course. But in my experience, professionals across
the board are not very good at evaluating whether "expanding their
reach," "growing their business," or "extending their practice"
actually makes sense. Before you start running after your big dream,
make sure that you aren't running in place.
I just love the parable about the venture capitalist and the peasant
fisherman. It's a bit worn, and has many versions, but I use it to
close this week's column because it gets at my final point better than
I have the words to express.
A venture capitalist was vacationing at the pier of a small coastal
village. A couple hours before lunch time, he noticed a small boat with
just one fisherman docked nearby. Inside the small boat were several
large yellow fin tuna. The VC complimented the fisherman on the quality
of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
"Only a little while," the fisherman replied. The VC then asked why
didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish? The fisherman said he
had enough to support his family's immediate needs. So the VC asked
what he did with the rest of his day.
The fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my
children, and take a siesta with my wife. Some nights, I stroll into
the village and play guitar with my amigos. We entertain the children
with stories and songs."
The VC offered, "I have an MBA from Harvard and could help. You
should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a larger
boat. With the proceeds from a larger boat you could buy several more
boats. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of
selling your catch to a middleman, you could sell directly to the
processor and open your own cannery. With my advice on marketing, you
would ultimately control the supply of product, processing, and
distribution."
"How long will all this take?" the stunned fisherman asked.
"Perhaps 10 to 15 years," the VC said.
"What then?", the fisherman asked.
"Then you could retire," the VC replied, "move to a small coastal
fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with
your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in
the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos."
Share your strategies to get your most important tasks done:
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