The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

It will have to be done later

The con­se­quence of always pri­or­i­tiz­ing what oth­ers bring them is that they do not have the time to work on tasks that have noth­ing to do with the employ­ees oth­er than very ear­ly in the morn­ing, late at night, or dur­ing week­ends — when cowork­ers are nowhere near.

Not every­thing is important

But, the same goes for peo­ple as for emails — they might con­tain absolute­ly any­thing — high and low, big and small. Even if a boss wants to be a good one, it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly so that every­thing con­cern­ing the employ­ees is equal­ly impor­tant or that doing these tasks or not is what deter­mines if you are a good boss or not.

The per­son who has too much to do will be wise to find things he or she usu­al­ly does that are not impor­tant — regard­less if it con­cerns the cowork­ers or not.

Do this

Find­ing time for all the things you need and are expect­ed to do as a man­ag­er can be chal­leng­ing. Does this sound famil­iar? If so, try the following:

1. Take a minute or two to think about what it is that makes oth­er peo­ple — be it your cowork­ers or even your own senior man­ag­er — think you are a good boss. What part of your lead­er­ship do you want to invest ener­gy into? Make a list on a note or in an app.
2. Now take a look back at the week that passed since you prob­a­bly remem­ber it rea­son­ably well.
   • What did you do that had some­thing to do with your coworkers?
   • What con­ver­sa­tions did you have?
   • What ques­tions did you spend time answering?
   • What emails did you write that were relat­ed to cowork­ers in some way?
   • What sud­den issues or prob­lems did you address or resolve?
3. Out of all these things, what was actu­al­ly not one of those impor­tant things that deter­mine if you are a good boss or not? Mean­ing, what could just as well have been done by some­one else (or not at all) and you would still have been con­sid­ered a good manager?
4. If you man­age to find things that are not impor­tant enough to do for some rea­son, then choose one thing — an activ­i­ty, a task, some­thing you have done — that you will stop doing from now on (to ben­e­fit of oth­er more impor­tant things in your work).
5. Make sure to con­cretize what you need to do to be able to stop doing that which you will now no longer do.
   • Can you sim­ply stop doing it, just like that?
   • Will you ask some­one else to do it instead?
   • Do you need to take a small­er first step to even­tu­al­ly stop doing what you have been doing?
6. Do this nec­es­sary thing right now or write it on your to-do-list as a task to be done lat­er to ensure that this whole exer­cise results in some change and relief.

More time for cru­cial activities

If you sep­a­rate the chaff from the wheat regard­ing what you spend your time on, you will end up with more time for what real­ly mat­ters, both for the busi­ness as a whole and for your lead­er­ship. Less pre­cious time is wast­ed and you will be in more con­trol of your work­day than you oth­er­wise would have been.

What’s your way?

Speak­ing to you who is a man­ag­er or boss of some kind, how do you ensure you have enough time? Feel free to write me and share your thoughts!

(By the way, have you tried this Fight Club relat­ed method for pri­or­i­tiz­ing?)