Choosing the wrong things
Our most important tasks often don’t find their ways to our calendar.
Our calendars show us mostly meetings, and the time needed for important stuff is usually the empty space between meetings. But when we see the empty time, we think that we have extra time and we add more meetings.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
Instead of immediately focusing on email, meetings, and other activities, we would be better off spending the morning doing productive work that requires a higher cognitive capacity (thinking, planning, calculating, for example), and delaying the tasks that don’t require as much mental energy to the hours when our capacity is diminished.
Unlike small, unimportant tasks, the challenge with our most important tasks is that our efforts aren’t immediately rewarded with visible progress.
The key to success here is to break down the big rocks into smaller milestones so that you can feel a sense of progress.
... is a common excuse we tell ourselves to avoid difficult tasks.
Set aside time, jump in and get done what you can. The best step we can take is to simply make a plan and start.
We engage in tasks that give us the sense we’re achieving something when in fact we’re not.
If you feel the need to get those small things done, get to them only after you have made real progress on an important task first.
With a long, overwhelming list of to-do items, it becomes more tempting to tackle the small, easy things in order to make visible progress.
There’s nothing wrong with keeping a to-do list, but we need to make sure that the joy of erasing things from our to-do list is not shifting the way we spend our time.
RELATED IDEAS
... instead of task management.
Task management is more effective than time management because these tasks come with clear limits which make them easier to manage. You know when you’ve started work on a project -- and you know when you’ve completed the job. It’s one limited thing at a time.
- Each team member must have a shared understanding of the ‘why’ of the big task and have a sense of commitment and purpose.
- The main objectives should be prioritized, and with each objective, a couple of measurable results should be defined. These actionable items related to the main objective help the team move forward. The Eisenhower Matrix can be used to diagrammatically list the urgency and importance of all the work on the plate.
- Let the team have time and space to complete the actionable tasks, being free to be in the no-disturbance flow mode for several hours a day.
- Chat and email notifications can be checked in separate blocks of time and a phone call can be only for emergencies.
- A items : Things you must do, which will have a serious positive or negative consequence.
- B items : Things you should do, that have minor consequences.
- C items : Things that are nice to do but don’t have any real consequences when they’re done.
- D items : Things to delegate so you can free up more time to do A tasks.
- E items : Things to eliminate. Generally stuff you do out of habit.