Task Master: Why Important is Better Than Urgent
I'm usually pretty good at getting to "Important" tasks every day. These are the high level, strategic actions you need to move your company or your career forward. Charting a marketing strategy for a new product, for example.
Problem is, I'm easily distracted by tasks that come flying into my email box or over the phone that others think are "Urgent." It might be a request from your boss to find a fact he needs for his monthly report. Urgent actions are often prefaced by the words, "Hey, could you take a couple of minutes to..."
Urgent tasks are always tempting to jump on because they can be dispatched with quickly. But they are the enemy of the Important, your real money work, says productivity guru Gina Trapani on her Harvard Business Publishing blog.
"Dealing with a constant stream of urgent tasks leaves you wrung out at the end of the day, wondering where all the time went, staring at the undone actual work you've got to complete."Among her suggestions for remaining focused on Important versus Urgent, turn off Microsoft Outlook and other distractions when you are doing Important work. "When you decide to work on one of your important tasks, give yourself an hour at least of uninterrupted time to complete it," she writes. "If the Web is too much of a temptation, disconnect your computer from the Internet for that hour."
Read her post for more ideas on how to focus on the work that really matters.
What do you do to get the important work done? How do you keep focus?