The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Undoubt­ed­ly urgent

The third cat­e­go­ry of peo­ple waits until right before the dead­line, right until the impor­tant task is also urgent since there is some­thing lib­er­at­ing in doing so — which is some­what of a para­dox. I can relate to them. When some­thing that is real­ly impor­tant needs to get done and it also hap­pens to be urgent, you have no sec­ond thoughts on what to do next. There is no doubt that this task is the right thing to work on for the entire day (and per­haps part of the night as well). It is both impor­tant and urgent! No one will ask you to do any­thing oth­er than what you are doing. Every­one under­stands that you need to work with con­cen­tra­tion and with­out being dis­turbed or inter­rupt­ed. You do not need to moti­vate or explain why you need to real­ly focus since it is this — AND ONLY THIS — task that needs your full atten­tion right now.

Fast often becomes faulty

How­ev­er, there is a def­i­nite down­side to this way of think­ing. When you are stressed and are work­ing at a high­er pace than you nor­mal­ly do, it is easy to make mis­takes. You miss a detail that will need to be cor­rect­ed lat­er, which in turn means that the task will take longer to com­plete. Some­thing has to be redone and you work away into the night for longer than you had antic­i­pat­ed. More tasks tend to become urgent before you start work­ing on them and the tem­po grad­u­al­ly increases.

Hav­ing the cake and eat­ing it too

There are ways to get those tempt­ing and sweet ben­e­fits of work­ing last-minute-style even if you work on tasks long before they are urgent. If you make it clear to your­self why you con­sid­er a cer­tain task so impor­tant that it deserves being worked on well before its dead­line, stand by your assess­ment, and defend your pri­or­i­ti­za­tion against any col­leagues who do not share it and who might not be used to you being so clear on what you pri­or­i­tize, you will to a greater extent than before be left alone to work with focus and con­cen­tra­tion on the task even if it is not unques­tion­ably urgent. It is still impor­tant enough to deserve your full atten­tion — just not des­per­ate­ly urgent as well.

Do this

If you want to have the perks of work­ing as if the clock was tick­ing and you were run­ning out of time, but avoid the neg­a­tive aspects of this sce­nario, then do this:

1. First of all, make it per­fect­ly clear to your­self what cri­te­ria dis­tin­guish some­thing impor­tant from some­thing that is not. The most com­mon rea­son to deem some­thing impor­tant is that it con­tributes to you reach­ing the goals you are respon­si­ble for attain­ing. If think­ing in terms of goals does not come nat­u­ral­ly to you, then impor­tant tasks are those which increase the like­li­hood of you accom­plish­ing what you wish to accom­plish through your work, that the results of your efforts are in line with what you want them to be, and that you get to where you are striv­ing to go.
   
2. Now, skim through your to-do-list and look for tasks that are impor­tant accord­ing to the cri­te­ria you have estab­lished. Put these tasks in the ​”important”-category, label them, or tag them some­how so that you can dis­tin­guish them from all your oth­er tasks.
   
3. Choose an impor­tant-task from the list which is not yet urgent and do it today — even if you are not under pres­sure to do it right now. Make a point of doing it before some­thing else you have intend­ed to do today which is more urgent but which is not nec­es­sar­i­ly impor­tant accord­ing to the cri­te­ria you have defined.
   
4. When you open the to-do-list tomor­row morn­ing, look through what you did yes­ter­day (which is today right now) and pause by the impor­tant but not yet urgent task you com­plet­ed — the task which you did with a lot more fore­sight than you usu­al­ly do things. Take a moment to reflect on what it was like doing the task yesterday.
   • Did you miss the pres­sure you are so used to or did you per­haps feel a tinge of it any­way since choos­ing to do this task made you feel a bit stressed regard­ing the urgent tasks you still had to do?
   • Notice how it feels see­ing the task ticked off your to-do-list well before it is actu­al­ly due. What does it feel like now, when you still have plen­ty of time before the dead­line and there­fore have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to look it all over again, attend to details and refine your work some­time between now and when it is due to make sure you are deliv­er­ing results with high quality.
5. If this method appealed to you, decide to do at least one impor­tant thing which is not yet urgent every day from now on.

Keep­ing the plusses, get­ting rid of the minuses

If you base your pri­or­i­ti­za­tion on some­thing else than tasks being urgent you will still get to work with focus if that is impor­tant to you, but will not have to suf­fer the down­sides and neg­a­tive effects of work­ing on tasks last minute. Wouldn’t that be marvelous?

What is your way?

How do you ensure that impor­tant things get done ear­ly on rather than at the very last minute? Please share the uncon­ven­tion­al trick that real­ly works for you in an email to me.

(Do you know you can get help focus­ing with Win­dows Clock?)