On tasks & priorities ✅
“Ordinary people think merely of spending time, great people think of using it.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
💡 Eisenhower Matrix
When talking about productivity or self-management, it will eventually discuss the Eisenhower Matrix. The framework has been used in managing workload & priorities, and it has helped a lot of people.
The idea is to categorize your tasks and activities into Urgent/Not Urgent, Important/Not Important. Ultimately, it will fall into the following quadrants:
I don't always have the matrix on top of my mind, but I realized it's already embedded in the way I operate.
Below, I will share the way I handle each work that lands on my plate. I noticed it is basically the Eisenhower Matrix, but as a system.
A personal system of prioritization ⚙️
Personally, I will never put important tasks on a To-do list. Important tasks go directly into my Calendar. I will talk about it more in each section.
DO - Schedule within the day
As soon as I have something urgent & important - I reschedule my day to build around that new thing. This means I will put some things off until later in the week & I will have to cancel or reschedule some meetings.
Time management is never about sticking to a schedule. It is about managing the tasks to do, the resources (time) you have, and keeping both in harmony.
DECIDE - Schedule for later
Anything that falls under this quadrant, I will decide when I would do it. Often, I block the next available space in my calendar to do the new task.
To-do lists only indicate when a task should be done, not when I will do it. If something is important, I will directly block it in my calendar. This way, I will always remember to do it, even at a later time.
DELEGATE - Put on a visible to-do list
Sometimes you don't have someone to delegate work to. This is where To-do lists come in. To-do lists help me remember what my future self needs to do. It almost feels like delegating.
Instead of scheduling it in the calendar, tasks that fall under this quadrant are things I do as soon as I’m idle (because they are still urgent). However, they wouldn't be as important as the ones I scheduled.
Ideally, in some of your tasks, personal or work, you will have teammates. This way, work can be shared & delegated. Our definition of “important” may even vary from one person to another, depending on your scope of work.
Still, having a To-do list helps in noting down tasks I offloaded or asked for help from. This way, I get to be reminded about following it up or checking on it.
DELETE - Put on a hidden to-do list
Work that isn't important or urgent should be eliminated. It can be easily done by saying no and not thinking about it anymore.
Writing is one of the best ways I can get it off the top of my mind. This means that even if I already decided a task is deprioritized, I would still log them to my To-do lists. However, I would usually put them at the bottom of my to-do list, or write them down in a notebook I won’t open so much.
One thing to note: tasks won't always stay in one quadrant. Tasks not urgent by now may be urgent later. Not important tasks can be important all of a sudden, and vice versa. This is why some of my tasks may move out of my to-do lists and into my calendar.
📙 High Output Management
The moment you are not just doing work assigned to you, but also managing it–effectiveness becomes an important consideration.
An idea that will complement what I shared above is from Andrew S. Grove's High Output Management. Grove talked a lot about becoming more effective, which incredibly helped me out when I was starting out as a manager.
"What is the medium of a manager's forecast? It is something very simple: his calendar."
– Andrew S. Grove
Grove shared multiple production principles that managers across different fields can use to be more effective.
One principle he talked about is using your calendar as a "production" planning tool. There are two responsibilities that managers should accept to make this happen:
1. Use your calendar actively
For most people, the calendar is only a repository of time-sensitive events. Sometimes, it is a list of requests from other people on how your time should be spent. To use the calendar only as a space for calendar invites is passivity.
Active use of the calendar means filling the space in the calendar with non-urgent but necessary work to do. It means knowing what is important and allocating time accordingly.
2. As early as possible, say "no" to work beyond your capacity
In relation to the topic above, these would be tasks under delegate or delete.
Every time we say yes & commit to something, we are also saying no to future opportunities. The sooner we decide to delegate or eliminate something, the less time & brainpower will be lost to it.
In spite of all the talk about effectiveness & productivity, Grove followed this principle with another one: allow slack–a bit of looseness in your scheduling.
Hope this helps.
📑 Some useful input
- I briefly talked about achieving Always Be Done (ABD) in my notes from the book The Art of Less Doing.
- A related read: The magic of doing $10,000 per hour work
- An interesting insight on AI is this writing on Superhistory, not Superintelligence
- I recently got back from a 12-day trip. Meeting Rev. Joseph Nguyen has been one of the highlights of my trip.
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