You Have a Time Prioritization Problem
The light bulb went on in the middle of the night while I was staring bleary-eyed at the blue-light glow of my computer monitor.
My wife and I had three young kids at home, and I was a programmer on a software development team that had a lot to do in a short time (like all software development teams). I’d make the trek to the office each day and then spend all my time in meetings, sometimes double-booked. I had zero time to engage in any of the actual code-writing I needed to do.
So I resorted to what most would do — I’d bring my laptop and try to get some work done during the meetings, rarely paying attention to what was going on. I got nothing done, and I was never mentally present enough in the meeting to contribute.
To keep my head above water, I’d sit in the kid’s playroom and write code for several hours after everyone went to bed. I did this almost every night.
That started the downward spiral — working through lunch, grabbing easy crap to eat, never exercising. You know this spiral because you’ve been in it. You’ve been here — working, studying, or both — till all hours for days, weeks, or months. Sometimes we have to do it.
Inevitably, both my physical and mental health started to suffer. I felt like crap, got even less done, and it manifested in my attitude at work and home. I was touchy, irritable, and honestly not very good at what I was doing.
But this isn’t a story about how I had to get better at managing my time, be more disciplined, or find some magic mantra that made it all better.
This is a story about who has control.
The Problem
The light bulb moment was me realizing that I let it get this way. This was my own fault. I was letting everybody else prioritize my time and control my life by extension. I allowed others’ views of what was urgent to overtake what I knew was important.
I didn’t have a time management problem. I had a time prioritization problem. And the only person who could prioritize my time properly was me.
That night, as I was wrapping up a coding session, it struck me — I sure am productive in a rather short time here in the quiet and lonesome middle of the night. How can I create this same environment for myself during the day?
I pulled up my calendar to look over my jam-packed schedule for the next day. It was filled from start to finish with bullshit meetings that I didn’t care about but that I was going to attend simply because someone else thought it was important to invite me.
I needed to free up my day.
An Inkling of a Solution
Bolstered by a combination of exasperation and realization, I wholesale declined all of the meetings for the next day.
I went to the office, found a hiding place away from my desk, and got to work. I had the most productive day in the office that I had had in a long time.
That was something to build on.
So I did it again, and this time I worked on clearing my schedule for the whole next week.
I got better at it.
I started to find the right mix of important meetings and focus time by taking control of my schedule. In addition to declining meetings that weren’t helpful, I changed meeting lengths from the default 60 minutes to 30 or sometimes 15 minutes. If I was hosting the meeting, I started by asking that everyone in the room please shut their laptop and pay attention. I learned that if each person in the discussion is engaged, you can get a lot done in a short time.
How to Prioritize Your Time
Time is your most expensive resource because you have no recourse to get more. You can make more money, you can even trade time for money, but you can’t make more time. How you choose to prioritize and use your time will make the biggest difference in your life.
I am now a true believer in time prioritization. I was converted, but how could I get better at it and apply it to my entire life?
Here are some things you don’t need to do:
You don’t need to schedule your entire day in 15-minute time blocks.
You don’t need to say “no” to everything.
You don’t need to spend an hour filling out an overly complicated planner each morning.
You don’t need some pseudo-objective scoring system, timers, or to give up all of your free time.
Here’s what’s worked for me:
The Eisenhower Principle
After my light-bulb moment, I went on a quest for methods of time prioritization, and I found one called “The Eisenhower Principle.” I now use it every day to help me take control and prioritize.
In a 1954 speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made public a helpful principle by which he prioritized his time. He said,
“I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent. “
— Dwight D Eisenhower
This principle can be visualized as a matrix:
Let’s first understand the difference between important and urgent:
- Important activities have an outcome that leads to you achieving a goal
- Urgent activities demand immediate attention and are usually associated with achieving someone else’s goals.
Quadrant 1: Important and Urgent
You MUST do these activities right now, and there are two types:
- Foreseen — deadline is coming, Instant Gratification Monkey (procrastination), etc
- Unforeseen — crises or emergencies
Some days you can’t avoid Quadrant 1, and that’s OK. Don’t beat yourself up, but honestly assess whether you can better plan and get ahead of the game in Quadrant 2.
Quadrant 2: Importand But Not Urgent
This is the magic quadrant. The more you prioritize your Quadrant 2 activities, the more efficient you become, the happier you are, and the more free time you find in your days.
Remember that “you time,” such as diet, exercise, and mental and physical rest, fits into this category along with the task list of stuff you need to get done.
Quadrant 3: Urgent But Not Important
*RED FLAG* This guy is the insidious killer, and I suspect is your main problem, as it was mine. I was allowing others’ urgency (mainly unimportant meetings and “I need you to…” requests) to interfere with what I knew was important.
Here is where you take control of your time.
I hereby give you permission to decline all useless meetings, say “no” to useless activities (note: this is not the same as “declining to do stuff you don’t want to do”), and push back every time someone starts a sentence with “I need you to…”
Quadrant 3 deserves no priority from you. Stop the madness.
When someone (a boss, client, etc) is trying to hang Quadrant 3 task around your neck, and you must make it your problem, look to delegate.
Quadrant 4: Not Urgent and Not Important
You have no good reason ever to prioritize a Quadrant 4 activity. Your strategy here is to avoid them.
However, look in the mirror and make sure that you aren’t artificially raising the priority of Quadrant 4 activities.
Does the garage really need to be cleaned today if you have some Quadrant 1 stuff to do? Is losing an hour down the YouTube rabbit hole helping you rest or making you more agitated? Are you scrolling through Facebook to start conversations and build relationships, or because you are being nosey?
Solving the Time Prioritization Problem
That first night when I declined all of my meetings for the next day out of sheer desperation, I took my first step in taking control of my time with an understanding of priority.
I realized that I didn’t have a time management problem. I had a time prioritization problem.
Then, through research and experimentation, I found the Eisenhower Principle, which I now use to help prioritize my time for each day.
When I first found it, I’d write the matrix axes in my notebook in the morning and allocate each request on my time to a quadrant. As new things popped up during the day, I would add them accordingly. The beauty of this activity was it allowed me to step outside of the emotional response at the moment and keep a clear head about priorities.
After just a few weeks, I no longer needed to explicitly make the matrices in my notebook because I got good and fast at accurately assessing my task list. Now I keep a simple daily task list segmented into three groups:
- The number one priority for the day. A single and likely Quad 1 task. Some days its a Quad 2 task. If all else goes to hell, I always do my best to make some progress on this one.
- Focus tasks. The Quad 2 tasks that I plan on working on that day.
- Backlog. Quad 2 tasks that I don’t need to work on today but are coming up. Sometimes I get to backlog tasks before they move to the Focus list.
The Eisenhower Principle forms the backbone of my time prioritization plan and my daily task list segmentation. You also can use it to help prioritize your time, increase your production, and reclaim more free time in your schedule.
One of the most liberating moments in your life is the moment you realize that you control your time.
