"If everything is important, then nothing is."

What is important?

Whenever I give a Time Management or similar training, the core of the message is the same: time is limited, and the things we have to do are too numerous. In other words: we need to decide on how to use our scarce resource ‘time’.?

Usually, this realization brings us to the Eisenhower Matrix, which you can read about here. This is a tool that can be used to do a triage on the use of your time in tasks that can be labeled urgent and/or important (or not).?

Whenever I confront people with this model, the main problem is usually that they find it hard to determine which tasks or responsibilities are ‘important’. This is partly due to the fact that we use a generic word, ‘important’ in a specific meaning in this model. What we mean is: which tasks have a high impact and which have a low impact. In the sense that doing them or not doing them, or doing them with lots of attention or with less attention, makes a big difference in your life, your work, your success.?

But rephrased in this way, this question is often still difficult to answer. Below, I’ll give a brief overview of what causes this and what mistakes one can make, as well as some tips to decide for yourself what is important for you.?

1. Common mistake: ‘everything I do is important’.?

I always encounter a couple of participants who say: “I have a hard time thinking of anything unimportant”. Of course, importance is a greyscale, not black/white. But if there’s no variance in the importance of items, that means every task and responsibility is as important. In your private life, it would mean that responding to a member of your family who has had a traffic accident is as important as putting the garbage outside to be picked up the day after. The same applies when it comes to most people’s work - there’s usually some responsibilities that make a big difference if done wrong or right. And other responsibilities that rather resemble menial work. The key is to not let all your time be eaten up by relatively menial stuff (which is: most emails and most meetings, for example).?

2. What others ask me to do is important

When you are asked a question, especially when it’s phrased like ‘could you help me with…’, most of us have a hard time saying no. This is not something negative - it’s very good that most people are wired in a way where they respond to questions asked and help out when prompted. This gives us a better society than if we would all be self obsessed loners.?

But we do have to be honest - in a professional context, not all requests lead to something important being done. Sometimes, the requests are made because you are sitting on a pile of information that others do not (let’s say, you have all the customer data, or sales figures, or something like that). Other times, the requests are made because you have a certain skill (you are a star at Excel and they don’t know how to spell ‘pivot table’, let alone use it). And in even other situations, a colleague will ask you for help just because it’s easier for them than figuring it out themselves.?

You can respond to all these requests, but the question is if that is the best use of your time, or the best use of your organization’s time. Were you hired for this? Or are you really supposed to do something more relevant?

So probably, it’s beneficial for you, your employer and quite possibly for the person who asked you for help that you say ‘no’ at least some of the time. How to do that is an art in itself that I will get back to in a future article.?

3. What my boss expects of me is important

Many people think ‘whatever my boss asks of me is important’. I also know some people who have an exception for the phone number of their boss - when their phone is on silent, it will still ring if their boss calls.?

Now don’t get me wrong - it is vital to build, maintain and nourish a good working relationship with your boss or manager. And that means that what they ask of you should be considered seriously and usually executed to the best of your ability. But that doesn’t mean that you need to do everything they ask you to all the time.?

Some bosses like to throw a lot of stuff your way. They only stop when you say ‘no’. This is actually a well known (if flawed) management technique. They just keep piling up tasks and little projects, until you say ‘stop’. That doesn’t mean that everything they ask of you is super relevant. There might be some important stuff there, but also some Category 4 (see Eisenhower Matrix) stuff. In that case, it is good to give some push back or at least challenge them on how important it is what they’re asking of you. And if you can deliver the results ‘quick and dirty’, or whether it needs to be perfect. Remind them of the time it will take you (or has taken you) to complete the tasks, and that you weren’t able to do that other task (X or Y). And perhaps remind them of your annual and long term goals, or those of the team, especially when they ask you to do things that diverge (in your estimation) a lot from what you’re supposed to be doing. Bosses are not perfect, and it’s your responsibility to challenge them as a professional individual and keep them on track, as well as yourself. ?

4. My own goals diverge from those of my boss / organization

Ideally, your own professional goals match the ones in your team and the ones of your manager to at least a significant extent. If they diverge completely, you might want to ask yourself if you’re placed in the right team and/or if you and your manager are on the same page with respect to goals.?

However, even if you’re quite properly placed and aligned with your team/boss, you will always have some goals that are individual to you. I’ll give some examples: (1) you’re an individual with individual challenges when it comes to competences, skills, and bad habits. So your path to growth is individual. You might benefit from taking part in a mentoring programme, a training, or even a sabbatical. That might not always be in the immediate interest of your team or organization (even though it usually is in the long run). You see sometimes that this is the reason some poorly led teams don’t promote training enough, they see it as some kind of ‘distraction’ that takes people away from their ‘real work’, whatever that is.?

(2) the other point where you diverge is that at some point, it might be good for you to change teams or change organizations. With that comes a change of manager, usually. This is never in the immediate interest of your team. So if you would have a long term activity to? obtain certain skills in order to be able to make a career change, this is a goal that you have but your organization might not care about. The same goes with respect to networking with people that are not of immediate benefit. You gain from that in the long term, but your manager might not care in the present.?

That doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t do these activities at all. It perhaps does mean that you might want to think about how and when to fit them into your schedule.?

5. Everything with a deadline is important

This is a classic misunderstanding. Just because tasks have a deadline, it doesn’t mean that they have the largest impact. Missing some deadlines (for instance, a store closes at 18:00, so should I make sure I get there before closing time) can have relatively little impact. But managing to do urgent stuff that at least has some impact is wise - the key is to allocate enough time and at the right moment to get this stuff off your plate. Then you allocate the rest of your time to things that have a higher impact.?

I realize I fooled you with the first header ('what is important'). I mainly talked about what is not important. What is important, is what is of most value to you. In Time Management, the key is to get enough long term things done while adequately managing all the short term urgent and necessary things. You want to improve your skill set, but also be responsive to colleagues. You want to build out your network, but you also need to file that project report before Friday afternoon. Some tasks will not change the world (or rather, your world), but they still need to be done. I’ll get more into what tactics you can use in one of the next articles.?