The Art of Juggling Priorities, Part 2
If you’d like to hear more about the Eisenhower Matrix or managing priorities, take a listen to the latest episode of the Marketing, Optimized podcast where I discuss it in more detail with the host, Jeaneen Bengtson!
Competing Urgent/Important Priorities
Using the Eisenhower Matrix discussed in my last post will help you free up time and resources on the right categories of tasks, but what about the all-too-common issue of having multiple Urgent and Important tasks at the same time? Though it’s easy to think that you simply have to power through them all—and risk not completing any of them—it’s essential to audit these tasks to determine if they’re actually Urgent and Important. The key?
Context!
Some office politics come into play here, so emotional intelligence can help navigate these situations, but here are the important questions to consider.
Who are the stakeholders (the CEO, for instance)?
Is it actually urgent? If the requestor said “ASAP” for the deadline, always ask them to define that for you. In addition, double-checking with the original source of the deadline (and the details) can sometimes shift Urgent and Important tasks down to Not-Urgent if there was a miscommunication or a typo.
Can you ask for an extension? If it’s for the CEO, probably not. If it’s a deadline handed down by a magazine for an ad, 99% of the time you’ll receive an extension.
If you’ve determined your multiple Urgent and Important tasks really are equally Urgent and Important, be transparent with your competing priorities, especially to your team lead. If these competing priorities are both from the same person or team, inform them of the conflict and ask which one should be completed first. Good managers appreciate transparency and communication.
You’re ideally left with a clear list of priorities and the confidence that you’re working toward the right goal, without feeling like you’re barely keeping your head above water.
Avoiding the Avoidable
Scarily enough, sometimes tasks that weren’t Urgent or Important may become Urgent and Important because we didn’t allow enough time for them. If we cleared up even an hour of productivity a day by, for example, giving one task the full focus and attention it requires instead of allowing email alerts to distract us and derail our flow, we can better avoid falling behind and feeling completely overwhelmed.
Practice Saying “No”
For the Urgent, Not Important and Not Urgent, Not Important quadrants -- where we want to either delegate or eliminate a task entirely -- the key is setting polite but firm boundaries. This can take some practice. If you’re getting routine interruptions with questions from your co-workers, for example, the solution could be establishing a block of time for them to come to you with a list of questions rather than piece-mealed.
Setting Yourself Up for Success
Looking at the bigger picture, any amount of reclaimed productivity also allows us to focus on our professional goals and creates wiggle room for the inevitable unforeseen and unplanned problems that crop up.