Is It Important, or Just Urgent?

New managers often tell me they seem to spend their time “putting out fires”; in other words, everything seems to be urgent and need attention right away. This is, in fact, a major cause of stress for managers at all levels, but particularly for new managers. So how can you deal with all these emergencies and still get on with the work you set yourself to do at the beginning of the day?

In Steven Covey’s classic book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, he divides tasks, challenges, decisions etc. into four quadrants, which he describes in the following diagram:

Think about an item that’s on your “to do” list right now. Which quadrant would it fall into?

For example, finishing your report for delivery at a high level meeting tomorrow: Q1

Planning a staff training program for next year: Q2

Answering a colleague’s question about where to make a lunch reservation: Q3

Answering an e-mail that should never have come to you in the first place: Q4

Now look at all the items on your current “to do” list, and consider which quadrant you live in most of the time in the course of your job. Most stressed new managers find they work predominantly in Q1 and Q3, because they automatically react to the urgent, never stopping to consider whether it is important or not.

Steven Covey changed a lot of lives by recommending that we move as much as possible into the items that belong in Q2: important but not urgent. Using my examples above, planning your staff training program is important, but it’s not urgent because it is for next year. Why is that good? Because it gives you time to do the job well without panic! The key here is not to procrastinate, but to block off time over a certain period to do the job before it becomes urgent. This is an automatic stress reducer.

So what about the other three quadrants? Q4 is a no-brainer: if it’s not urgent and not important, why do it at all? Get rid of these items.

Q3 items are not important, so why is it urgent that you do them? Often these items become urgent because other people having procrastinated about asking you for information, and now they need it right away. That makes it their problem, not yours. Help them out the first time, but make it clear that in the future you can’t be interrupting your schedule to deal with items that would not have been urgent had they been dealt with earlier.

Finally, Q1 items must be done urgently because they are also important. Your task as a manager is to come up with solutions so that these particular items don’t become emergencies in future. The best way to do that is to handle them before they become urgent — in other words, move them over to Q2.

The Covey Quadrant is one of the most useful tools you will ever come across as a manager. Take some time to put it to work, and work as much as possible in Q2. You’ll be amazed at how much important work you get done, and how much less stressful your day becomes.

Questions from New Managers: Unscheduled Interruptions

This is the first post in a category I call “Questions from New Managers”, and I invite you to submit your questions for future posts. Just send your question, in as much detail as you want, to me at helen@tipsfornewmanagers.com and I will answer it for you.

Our first question comes from Bob, a Traveler on The Manager’s Journey:

“Helen, I try to start off my day with a carefully thought out to-do list, but it keeps getting longer because of the things that come up during the day. Quite often they don’t really need to be taken care of right away, but I’m afraid I’ll lose track of them or people are waiting for my reply to their question. How can I fit these things into my day without squeezing out the things I had planned to do?”

Well Bob, I’m sure you’ve already found that time management takes on a whole new dimension when you become a manager! Questions and requests for your time are a fact of life now and you must deal with them, but it’s important that you handle them in a way that works for you. I’m pleased you start off your day with a good to-do list, and I hope you have blocked off an appropriate amount of time for each item. Since most tasks take longer than we think, it’s also a good idea to build in some “wiggle room” by allowing an extra five to ten minutes for each, depending on its importance.

But of course those interruptions are not on your schedule, and time is finite, so what do you do? My favourite tool for handling this is the “parking lot”. It’s a place to make note of things that need to be done, but not necessarily right now. I use a small whiteboard, located to one side of my desk where I can easily reach it. Here, I jot down items I want to keep on my radar, but that I don’t want to do immediately at the expense of my scheduled items. Some days it gets pretty full, while on other days it stays comfortably open, but my rule is that it starts off each day blank. That means at the end of each day I deal with each item by either scheduling it into a future time slot, delegating it to someone else or, in more cases than you’d think, simply removing it because the need for it has disappeared.

It’s important to keep your parking lot near you, because if you have to stand up and walk over to your it, you often won’t take the time—and little pieces of paper scattered on your desk don’t do the job nearly so effectively.

So my advice to Bob, and other new managers dealing with this “time pirate” is to set up a parking lot and start each day with it empty. Try this, and do let me know how it works for you.

Remember, I want to answer your questions, so do send them to me at helen@tipsfornewmanagers.com