The most effective way to squeeze more out of yourself in a day isn’t to try and work harder, it’s to do things in a different order.
If your priorities are out of whack, no productivity system or tool can save you - you’re trying to sprint underwater. So where do you start?
First, understand the difference between urgent and important:
- Urgent - based on the deadline
- Important - based on the value it brings to your team
The time-sensitive nature of urgent tasks often makes them feel important, but this isn’t necessarily true. It usually isn’t.
Urgency is usually created by other people. Importance is assigned by you - how much does getting this done benefit my team’s goals?
Categorize your work in one of the following buckets:
- Important + Urgent - Take care of this right away, but try to keep things from getting to this point if you can.
- Emergencies
- Surprises
- Unplanned requests
- Important + Not Urgent - Do as much of this work as possible because it’s benefitting you the most.
- Learning
- Strategy
- Personal development
- Not Important + Urgent - Partner with others or delegate these completely if you can.
- Meetings
- Emails
- Interruptions
- Not Important + Not Urgent - Remove anything like this from your productive time.
- News
- Television
- Scrolling
You can only do so many things in a day. If you spend your limited time and energy dealing with other people’s emergency first, you won’t have enough in your tank to get important work done. Make it a point to thoughtfully plan your day to put your best foot forward on the things that matter most.