Years ago I was staying with family friends down in Los Angeles—Liz and Gerald Jennings. Mr. Jennings was the owner of the Everest Jennings Corporation, which at the time was the largest manufacturer of wheelchairs in the world. Over breakfast one morning I asked him, “Mr. Jennings, you seem to have so many things to do. How do you get as much done as you do?”
He smiled and replied, “Well, I have three secretaries that work for me. So each of them has a list of things they want me to do, and I have a list of things that I myself want to do. So every day at the end of my day, I have all four of these lists in front of me. And I go through and I prioritize them. I look at them and I pick out the most important things to do.”
He said, “Here’s how I do it. I take out an 8 x 11 piece of paper; I draw a line down the middle of it. Then across the top of the paper, maybe one inch down, draw a line side to side.”
So the paper’s divided down the middle top to bottom and about an inch down from the top, a line side to side. On the left hand side of the paper I write “imperative”. Imperative are those things that absolutely must be done right now. They’ve got to be done immediately, I can’t put them off, can’t stall, need to be done as soon as possible.
On the other side of the dividing line, on the right hand side of the paper at the top, I write “important”.” These are things that need to be done but they’re secondary to the imperative things. “
He said, “I begin to look at my lists that each of my secretaries has given me and my own. Normally it’s 100+ things I need to do in a day which is impossible. There’s no way I can get all of them done.”
I then ask myself this question, “If I could only do one thing before I left my office for a month, which of these things would be the one thing that I really want to get done before I go?”
He’d then look over his list and decide, “That’s the one.” There’s one of them that stands out. That one goes under number one on imperative. He then repeats that process.
He asks himself, “If I could only do one more thing before I left for a month, what would that be?” Looking over the lists he picks the second, and puts that under number two for his imperative list. He keeps repeating this process until he has all six under the imperative side.
When he has chosen the six most imperative things to get done, he then asks the same question and chooses the six to go under the important side. Remember the question, “If I can only do one thing before I left for a month what would it be?” So he chooses six on the imperative, six on the important side.