Tending to the Important

Posted on January 11, 2008

It’s all too easy to lose focus on the important tasks in our lives and to busy ourselves with seemingly urgent work. In the end, we pay for that in a big way. Here are some tips for fighting this common battle.

In the story, I forgot to make a dinner date with Phil well in advance, and by the time I remembered he was all booked up. That meant I missed seeing him for a year, which isn’t good for building a relationship.

It’s really easy to get swept away by all the urgent things and details in our day-to-day work and forget about diligently, relentlessly pursuing the important things. Then we resentfully wonder how others around us with less skill and knowledge (in our opinion) seem to jump forward with big leaps of success. Why is this?

Usually it’s because we all get deluged with urgent matters via phone, fax, e-mail, people walking in our office, even SMS now. These urgent details catch our attention, and because they are usually quick to be handled or resolved, and because they are making noise, we tackle them first. Then, as the end of the day comes we think, “Darn, I never even started working on such and such project that I was all fired up to do as I drove in this morning….” Another day slips by.

Write down your priorities

To fight this, we must first clarify in writing what is on our to-do list that is really important—the stuff of company building. Once clarified, we have to set goals and objectives with time-targets laid out. Post them and make it public, so that the important projects start to feel urgent too.

I’ve found that setting time aside to work on projects (I often work on them very early in the morning) is helpful, and that I sometimes do the work away from the distractions at the office.

If you can, deny yourself the good feelings we often get from accomplishing urgent but not important tasks. At the end of a day when I’ve lost control of my time and ended it without working on the important tasks, I am distinctly dissatisfied with myself, even if I made some excellent things happen.

Monitor your focus

Be sure to pay attention to your own behavior, and watch out for procrastination. Often choosing simple tasks over big intimidating projects is just procrastination at work. One cure for that is to break up the large projects into bite-size pieces and just tackle them one at a time—with each part having a deadline in writing.

Often making yourself accountable to others for the important projects helps. It could be your boss, your leadership team, or a fellow executive in a peer group. But knowing that someone will be asking you about your progress on a certain date spurs most of us into action.

One of the most important things in business is tending to your network. Who you know is a big deal, even if you can’t tell right now how it will help. Set aside time to keep your network vibrant.

In the end, if you are really hungry for the outcome that you’ll achieve if you do the important things, you’ll push them to the top of the list and tackle them. Passion is your ally.

Takeaways:

• Clearly identify the important things on your “list” that will make a big difference for your future.
• Set aside specific times of day that you will do only these things.
• Feel GREAT when you accomplish the important things, but don’t let yourself feel so good at the end of a day that you’ve mostly done the urgent work.