Feeling overwhelmed by your workload?
I often write and speak on workload management. But even I occasionally get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests and assignments. I’m in such a state right now.
I recently had an overwhelming week: I attended board meetings for three different companies (two were out of town); spoke publicly five times; and reviewed the copy-edited manuscript for my new book. That doesn’t even count the 669 e-mails I received. No wonder I felt overwhelmed!
Categorize your tasks by priority. In my view, this is the one thing missing from David Allen’s system. It assumes all tasks are equal. Or to say it another way, you can only decide a task’s relative priority in the moment. This doesn’t work for me. I end up with scores of tasks I must review every day. My eyes glaze over, and I fall prey to what Charles Ummel calls the Tyranny of the Urgent.
I personally categorize each task with one of these tags. At the beginning of each day, I focus on my A’s first. If I get those done, I move to the B’s, then the C’s.
Practice intentional neglect. Many people practice the opposite—unintentional neglect. They forget to do something or they are late in meeting their deadlines. They don’t like this behavior and neither do those who are counting on them, but this inevitably happens if you don’t practice intentional neglect. You must decide in advance you will not do category D tasks. They are neither urgent nor important. They are simply not worthy of your time or attention.
“But,” you may ask, “what about tasks I don’t think are important but someone else does?” Great question. Let me give you an example.
When I was a CEO, my Board sometimes asked me to do something I thought was a waste of time. I didn’t regard it as important. But, because I served at their pleasure — and wanted to keep my job! — I re-categorized it in my mind as important. Sometimes, it is a simple matter of re-framing the task.
On the other hand, I recently received a lunch request from a man who is an acquaintance. He is looking for a job and wanted to discuss career possibilities in the publishing industry. This is no doubt important to him and possibly urgent. For me it is neither, so I declined.
The bottom line is you must learn to say “no” to the unimportant tasks, so you can say “yes” to the important tasks and actually get them done.
Do the next most important thing next. Multi-tasking is a myth. You really can’t do more than one thing at a time—at least more than one thing that requires focused attention. So get your list of priorities, do the most important thing first, then move to the next item and work down your list.
For today, I have six things I’d like to accomplish: one of them is an A, four are Bs, and one is a C. I’m starting at the top and working down the list.
Michael Hyatt is the Chairman (and ex-CEO) of Thomas Nelson, the largest Christian publishing company in the world. Michael has written four books, one of which landed on the New York Times bestseller list. Since resigning from active executive role in Thomas Nelson, Michael has been having a great success as professional blogger and speaker.