Sometimes you don't do the work because it's just not that urgent or important - until it is. Leaving things to the last minute is certainly one way to focus your mind and energy, but in the long term it's not sustainable. It also doesn't make good business sense. In fact, we become addicted to the dopamine and adrenaline rush of always on, cramming and doing everything last minute, so we condition ourselves to become procrastinators to survive.
YET. We all know our best ideas and solutions come when we have the time, space and capacity to really think about things. It's in this space, that you activate your executive function, working proactively on tasks, rather than reacting and using your stressed brain.
Procrastinators are masters at leaving things to the last minute and rushing through work and often delivering sub-optimal results. The biggest problem managers face is that they are conditioning their people to behave in this way.
The common experience
How managers feed the procrastinator
The never ending to-do list
The solution
To be effective and override the procrastinator, you need to shift your focus to what is important, not just urgent.
Important activities are those strategic plans, the high value tasks, those goals that will help the individual and business to grow.
Urgent activities cannot wait and have a deadline. They usually involve solving someone else’s' problem and the consequences of not dealing with them will cause more stress.
Therefore, many people leave their personal development at the bottom of the list. There is no external pressure to complete it, until the annual appraisal comes up of course. Yet, developing yourself is important. It makes you a better employee, increases knowledge, experience, and performance, yet is never seen as urgent.
Excercise
List all your activities, projects, milestones and to do lists on a sheet of paper. I mean everything. Now assess each item against the criteria of its importance and urgency.
Urgent and important. These will either be items that you knew were coming up and you didn't do straight away so they are now urgent, or they came out of the blue and couldn't have planned for. Most are in the first category. Add these items to your calendar now and make them a priority.
Important but not urgent. These are the tasks that will add value and need to be prioritised. They include personal and professional development, big goals, high value activities -Your 12-month goals. Give yourself plenty of time. Put them in your diary over coming days, weeks and months and stick to your commitment to them.
Not important but urgent. These are the low value activities that stop you from achieving your goals. They are the time stealers and a procrastinators dream. They show up as team members problems, interruptions, or conflicts. Can you delegate these tasks (without adding to someone else’s never ending to-do list) or reschedule them to a time when you can give it adequate thought or care? Can you say "no" or train someone else to deal with the problem themselves? If you find yourself being drawn into urgent but not important tasks, it might be time to fix the cause of the problem (important) so that it doesn't become urgent again.
Not Important and not urgent. These are just distractions. Avoid them where possible. Do you really need to go to that meeting, or watch that presentation, or get involved in that conversation? If it's someone else trying to dump something on you, ask questions about how urgent and important it is right now? You'll be amazed at how quickly you stop being dragged into these tasks as soon as you start asserting your boundaries.
3WH
dOWNLOAD
urgent & important template
Discover more from 3WH
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.