“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Increasingly I’ve realized that one trait that separates good leaders from the great is the ability to discern the important from the merely urgent.
Dwight Eisenhower had a great system for identifying the relationship between urgent and important work, and it’s a handy tool for looking at your work with objectivity to identify what truly matters.
But the first challenge, I think, is being able to truly discern what is actually important work. Many days, I can’t help but focus on the most urgent thing – the squeakiest wheel, the loudest person in the room. Yet as I’m doing the work, I can’t help but wonder if the work I’ve chosen to do is truly what matters most – and what I’m putting off by focusing on it instead.
My only method for identifying the important work is regularly looking at all the projects and tasks I’ve identified at once and mentally prioritizing them.
Of course, doing this requires you actually organize all your tasks in one place – a task easier said than done. But whether it’s a trello board, Jira issues, a whiteboard, or a boring old notebook – some method of cataloging everything of note is key to making this work.
From there, it’s important to look at the tasks with objectivity. So preferably, it’s best to do this exercise at the end of the week, or outside working hours, to avoid being influenced by the latest fire alarm to come across your desk.
It’s inevitable that some of your priorities will need to be the urgent ones, but this exercise helps ensure you sneak in some of the important work first.