More ‘Prioritization’ and Less Speed

By: Chris Wright, Posted on: May 12, 2016

Remember ‘More haste, less speed’? Which basically implies the ‘The faster you try to do something, the more likely you are to make mistakes and you will more time to do them had you planned them first.’ In the workplace your performance is critical to your own and your company’s future success and identifying important tasks is critical as they ensure you are doing the right things and doing these things right. What you really need is a framework to prioritize your work and this article discusses the power of the Eisenhower principle in auctioning important tasks and avoiding unimportant ones.
The ‘Eisenhower principle’ is credited to former US president Dwight D. Eisenhower. At a speech to the second assembly of the world council of churches, Dwight D. Eisenhower was quoted as saying “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” [1]
The Eisenhower principle (please see Table 1) is a modern time management technique that is easy to implement but usually overlooked. Being a practical tool means it can easily be used to prioritize our professional and personal lives.

How can the Eisenhower principle be used?
This tool can be applied to short-term (day-to-day) and long-term tasks. The main thing to do is to focus on important items as these are need to achieve our goals, whether these are professional or personal.

1. Define what is important

The aim is to focus your efforts on priority 1 and 2 items as these are for you. Then make time to do them. Start this by listing everything you need to do. For example, it might be important to monitor your work emails if the company is reliant on this technology as a communication and information tool. In this case ensure you set specific times during the day to check your emails and do not have your inbox open all day. Indeed, having email open means there is the potential for emails to appear on your screen and for you to become distracted by them. This will interrupt your work and, to give you an idea of the extent of interruption, it has been estimated that digital media per se interrupts 1 in 2 employees every 15 minutes (i.e., 32 interruptions per day) [2] and this has been negatively related to decision-making, work efficiency and productivity. [3] Effects that can be easily overcome by creating your own rules. One simple approach is to only check emails two to three times per day. [4] Once you have read emails close your account.

2. Open your calendar and start assigning time to work on ‘important, not urgent’ activities

It is a common mistake to only focus on ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ tasks on your to do list. This should be avoided as you will be ignoring tasks that you need to do but do not have time. For these items it’s better to think of them as ‘need to be done but just don’t have time to do them, yet!’ For example, you may have to attend a training course to gain a promotional move. Make time to do the training during the year as it is important to your livelihood and then make sure you do it well.
In your calendar assign activities every day. To help prioritize items, ask yourself ‘what does a good week or good month look like?’ Or ask yourself ‘what do I need to complete this week for next week?’ Once you have this image clear in your mind, assign time and then work according to the plan in the calendar. Ensure the activities are SMART [5]:

S – specific, significant, stretching.

M – measurable, meaningful, motivational.

A – agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented actionable.

R – realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented.

T – time-based, time-bound, timely, tangible, trackable

3. Assign time to work on ‘urgent, important’ items

You cannot always predict certain issues or avoid other issues. These ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ items need to be done and may be last minute requests. Try to make time in your calendar or free-up time by moving items around but do not delete these items as they need to be done and are not going away.

4. Keep some free time in your calendar

This is a ladder and an opportunity to build time with your colleagues. Capture this as conversations or meetings and ensure this is done to keep your relationships and to network.

5. Unimportant items

It is imperative that you learn to identify the unimportant items. One simple rule for ‘unimportant and urgent’ items is to reschedule or delegate these talks. For ‘unimportant and not urgent’, learn to avoid them as they are a distraction.
Conclusions
With a few tweaks you will find the Eisenhower principle a very useful and practical tool that can be used on a day-to-day basis to manage your time and to achieve your objectives. Table 2 summarizes the key actions you should be assigning to respective talks. Focus on the items in green and defined actions for important and urgent items, and plan and dates items that are important but not urgent. For unimportant items, it is advised to important to spot these and to delegate or avoid them as they are time stealers and mean that you will not achieve your own or the company’s objectives.

Take-home messages
Learn to action or plan (i.e., define an action-plan) for important items and avoid or delegate the unimportant ones.