Instead of allowing them to take over your time, make a plan for how you’ll deal with them.

Begin by defining the tasks that demand 100% of your focus and the ones that can be dealt with while being interrupted. You want to give your most focused hours to your most important tasks.

• Break your big projects down into simple manageable steps and then set a short deadline for each.
• Switch from “task urgency” to “time urgency” , to choose what really deserves your attention.
• Don’t let urgent tasks control the first hour of your day. Set aside blocks of ...

The problem is that we’re continually bombarded with urgent work: emails, meetings, calls, and instead of being in control of our time and attention, we respond and act on someone else’s priorities.

• Deep attention means putting our focus on one task for a long period of time and putting aside other external interruptions.
• Hyper attention is turning our focus swiftly between different tasks, opting for diverse information streams, and looking ...

A few explanations as to why it’s so hard to reject urgent tasks:

• The completion bias. Our brains crave the reward we get from checking off small to-dos from our list.
• Tunnel vision: When we get overwhelmed by the things we have to do, we ch...