The blog

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

Are you the spi­der in the web?

If this sec­ond part of what you have on your to-do list con­sists of ​”a whole lot of tasks” (mean­ing that quite a few of your tasks are those oth­ers are depen­dent on to do their jobs), then this means you are an impor­tant piece of the com­pa­ny-puz­zle, so to speak. Many depend on you to do your tasks and the results that come from your work. If you get delayed or post­pone doing what oth­ers need from you, there is a risk that the progress in the whole busi­ness, com­pa­ny, or depart­ment slows down and that what is sup­posed to flow fast and free becomes slow and stagnant.

Con­tin­ue quicker

If this is the case, you will be right to pri­or­i­tize doing the tasks oth­ers are depend­ing on you to do. You do not want to be the bot­tle­neck that slows other’s progress down but rather the col­league who quick­ly hands over the baton so that the next eager ​”run­ner” in the busi­ness relay race does not have to wait for you and will lose nei­ther speed nor energy.

Mixed mes­sages? Not at all!

Does this real­ly make sense? Is this not the com­plete oppo­site of what I usu­al­ly rec­om­mend regard­ing how to pri­or­i­tize and that we ought to do tasks that are both urgent and impor­tant above all else, where the impor­tant is derived from whether or not they con­tribute to your goals? Not to wor­ry. They are not at odds and oppos­ing per­spec­tives at all. If you need to deliv­er infor­ma­tion or things to oth­ers in order for the com­pa­ny to func­tion prop­er­ly, then this is prob­a­bly impor­tant enough for you to have (or if you do not, you should have) goals that reflect how quick­ly or well you man­age to do these very tasks.

Do this

If you want to con­tribute to things get­ting done with greater ease and speed in your com­pa­ny, then do the following:

1. Look through your to-do-list and see if you can find tasks oth­ers are wait­ing for you to do.
2. Cre­ate a ​”What oth­ers are wait­ing for”-category, tag, or the likes and use it for these tasks. Per­haps it is referred to as ​”labels” or ​”hash­tags” instead of ​”cat­e­gories” in your par­tic­u­lar to-do-list tool.
3. Sort your list (if you can) so that you see the ​”What oth­ers are wait­ing for”-tasks that need to be com­plet­ed today (or soon­er, or very soon!) at the top of or first on the list.
4. If you want to unleash the pow­er of the rest of your team and give them a boost in their work, do these tasks first.

More flow

If you have a role at work that oth­ers depend heav­i­ly on, the busi­ness will def­i­nite­ly flow smoother if you pri­or­i­tize these tasks first instead of it com­ing to a halt when you have too much to do. You will also end up with less to do since you will not have to deal with as many ​”when is the mate­r­i­al coming?”-emails as you usu­al­ly receive since you will have few­er peo­ple breath­ing down your neck due to you giv­ing them what they want and need sooner.

If this approach means that you in the long-run do not have time for oth­er impor­tant tasks you also wish to do, then you might need to con­sid­er why oth­ers are depend­ing so heav­i­ly on you and that you do these par­tic­u­lar tasks. Could you change some­thing so that those who are wait­ing for you will do just fine on their own from now on?

What’s your way?

How do you make sure that the whole busi­ness does not come to a grind­ing halt every time you have oth­er things to do if you are in some kind of key-posi­tion? Have you devised some clever method, way, or trick that helps you? If so, please feel free to email me and there­by maybe help oth­ers who read this blog.

(Do you know it might be the best time to help oth­ers when you are stressed?)