Diagram 7.1: The Importance vs Urgency Matrix
A common challenge that managers will encounter is that each day they are faced with an endless stream of work coming in while time is constantly in short supply. As a result, working hours become extended. Many will respond by staying very late at the office or taking work home.
There is much good to be said about developing a strong work ethic of being dedicated and diligent, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. However, if long hours become a norm rather than an exception, it may not be about work ethics. It may be a common case of working hard but not working smart.
Let’s consider the situation that Raja, a newly minted manager, is experiencing three months into his new role.
As Raja sips his latte at his favourite neighbourhood café on a balmy Saturday morning, he is deep in thought. So much has changed in such a short time, he muses. Three months ago, he was a happy-go-lucky production planner. Now he is the boss, as his friends are calling him. “Boss” refers to the position of production planning manager with a team of experts working for him.
He has to stifle a woeful smile that is curling up his lips. If only I had known that being boss means so much more paperwork, endless meetings, making unpopular decisions and answering for so many things that I do not directly control, he mutters to himself.
It’s time to get a grip, he scolds himself. Let me list down my key activities on a typical day. Perhaps with that, I’ll be able to figure out how I should organize my workday differently. With that idea in mind, he switches on his laptop and types in the following points.
1. My day starts with a bang: (a) urgent phone calls, (b) incoming emails, or (c) people walking into my office. Approximately 2 hours
2. Attends two to three meetings lasting 1 hour to 1.5 hours each. Total time spent: 3.5 hours
3. Bosses suddenly summon me for a quick chat: 1 hour
4. Peers coming in to talk on work: 1 hour
5. My guys seeking my decisions and advice: 1.5 hours
6. Reading and replying to emails: 1.5 hours
7. Working on projects assigned by bosses: 2 hours
8. Attending discussions that my guys can handle: 1 hour.
9. Thinking about next steps: 0 ?????
He quickly sums the hours up. Mama Mia! It’s 13.5 hours. Amazingly, lunch time has not even been factored in. What’s worse, he hasn’t even spent a single minute planning ahead as a manager. Typically, he leaves for home at 10 p.m. It is a long journey back, and he always gets home very hungry and tired. The cycle repeats itself day after day.
It’s increasingly clear to him that he is not in control of his work. On the contrary, his work is controlling him! What must he do differently? He looks up from the screen and gazes at other patrons streaming in for their morning cuppa.
Time is a precious commodity. Don’t fritter it away.
Winston Churchill once said, “Failure to plan is planning to fail.” Ironically, though Raja does a great job in planning his company’s production schedule, he doesn’t apply the same treatment to his workday. What he is experiencing, though unpleasant, is not uncommon. It is also not a new manager’s phenomenon, I assure you. Managers very high up the corporate ladder and who prowl the corridors of power are similarly afflicted. The scene reminds us of hamsters running on wheels.
At this point, I would like to share with you a few useful tools and concepts that will help the likes of Raja get back on an even keel. As you apply these tools, you will no doubt devise others as well. Experiment with them and start to reap the benefits.
The importance of time management cannot be overestimated. If you do it right, it will serve you well for the rest of your career. You will accomplish much more in a shorter time and still have some bandwidth in reserve to take on things that are more far-reaching and strategic. This becomes of pivotal importance as you move up the corporate ladder. You will then be literally juggling ten balls of different sizes and shapes in the air simultaneously. Therefore, it’s best for you to learn and master the basics now when all you have to do is juggle three balls, so to speak.
There are three basic steps here:
1. Set up a To Do list
2. Assign priorities
3. Act on what your list says
The To Do list is simply a list of items that you have identified as needing your attention. At the end of each day, spend a few minutes to plan what you wish to do the following day. Prioritize the items and then make sure that you carry out your plan the next day. Review what you have accomplished at the end of the day, crossing out the completed items and adding new ones. The key is this: Plan your work and work your plan.
Not everything that comes to your mind is worth your time doing. Time is a precious commodity. To make the best use of it, we will need to know our priorities.
“Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.”
— Goethe
A useful time management model is the Importance vs Urgency Matrix illustrated by Diagram 7.1. I first came across this in the The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People written by Stephen Covey.
Diagram 7.1: The Importance vs Urgency Matrix
There are two dimensions to consider: urgency vs importance. When something is urgent, it presses on us and says “Do it now.” It may not be important but it gives us a sense of accomplishment when we do it. Remember the time when your printer misbehaved while you were trying to print a report? Instead of calling for help from the company’s IT department, you stopped everything and spent the next 30 minutes fixing it yourself. It felt good, didn’t it when you finally got that darned thing to work?
When something is important, it has great impact on your results as a manager. It is usually also quite difficult to complete. Thus we tend to put important matters off because we tell ourselves that we need more time to do them properly.
In the matrix are four quadrants, namely: (1) Fire-fighting, (2) Reactive, (3) Trivia and (4) Proactive. Using this matrix, let’s diagnose how Raja has been using or misusing his time. Chances are, Raja has been devoting nearly all his time in Quadrants 1, 2 and 3. As he has been so overwhelmed by these daily demands, he hardly has any time left for Quadrant 4.
Effective managers should consciously place as top priority the activities in Quadrant 4—the things that matter most. This is being forward-looking and proactive and ought to be the largest chunk of their workday. They do this by understanding the rhythm of their business. By knowing the peaks and troughs in the work year, they will observe how certain months are very action-packed and some weeks less so. They then orchestrate activities so that they and their team are doing what are important before they become urgent. By taking this approach, they will need to work less on tasks in Quadrants 1 and 2, and they will consciously waste no time in Quadrant 3—the things that matter least.
When we decide to work on a number of activities, it will pay off handsomely in terms of higher effectiveness if we take into account the 80/20 principle. This is also known as the Pareto’s Law, named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Simply stated, it means that if we do 100 things, 80 percent of the desired results will come from only 20 percent of the things we do.
These are some examples that may resonate with you:
♦ 20 percent of your customer base may likely be responsible for 80 percent of your revenue;
♦ 20 percent of the actions you take may produce 80 percent of your results; or
♦ 20 percent of the emails you read may contribute to 80 percent of the information that you need.
Therefore, pause and think before acting. Not all activities are equally productive to engage in. Some are just more beneficial than others!
In the previous sections, we discussed how to prioritize using the Importance vs Urgency matrix and the 80/20 principle. Although most people are familiar with them, finding a workable way to productively manage their time remains elusive.
The biggest rock that stands in their way is that the items in quadrant 1 are too numerous and daunting. Unless these are cut down to manageable proportions, they become overwhelmed by a sense of deja vu and helplessness. Why? Because it has been like this for a long time. And heaven knows they have tried to apply time management tools for the longest time. Yet, they can hardly keep their head above the water.
What are underlying causes? There are four keys ones that I‘d like discuss here.
1. Lack of scrutiny of the items in Quadrant 1
When items are lumped into Quadrant 1, do we ask whether they really belong there in the first place? Probably not. We just assume that they should be there. This is the start of the downward spiral.
The emergency rooms of hospitals have to deal with patients who all seem to need immediate medical attention. Due to limited medical resources it’s simply not possible to accord top priority to everybody. Through a system called triage, patients are quickly assessed and then sorted into different categories so that those with the most dire needs are treated ahead of those whose treatment can be delayed till later. .
The triage process can be applied to time management. All you need is to pause a little and ask yourselves some probing questions. This will enable you to move some items out. Your head starts to clear a little, and you can breathe easier.
2. Allowing others to dump their work into your Quadrant 1
In today’s matrix organisation, it is quite common to have to respond to urgent calls for help from peers, stakeholders and bosses. Such exigencies are sometime unavoidable. But there are times when you know that with a little forward thinking of the part of your colleagues, these last minute surges could have been reduced. If you notice a pattern to such requests, it is incumbent upon you to bring this up and agree on a mutually acceptable way forward. There is an adage that speaks to this: You get what you tolerate.
3. Procrastination in addressing items in Quadrant 4
Items which are important but not urgent are usually ignored until they become urgent. If we envision a conveyor belt flowing from Quadrants 4 to 1, we realise immediately that it’s inevitable that with the passage of time Quadrant 4 items will morph into Quadrant 1’s.
When items are in Quadrant 4, we have time on our side. We can plan better and do a better job. This is right the place and time for managers and their teams to focus and do their best job. Their aim should be to stop the moving conveyor belt and not allow anything within their control to spill over to Quadrant 1.
Yet, many managers will procrastinate. Some have said, albeit tongue-in-cheek, that when there is time on their side, somehow the thrill is missing. You don’t get that adrenaline rush that kicks in when you are dealing with a crisis. On a more sober note, they do concede that this is irresponsible leadership and is the quickest route to burnout and a demotivation.
The choice is yours.
4. Poor deployment of your resources
Managers who are constantly fire-fighting may be not be leveraging resources that are already available. A good manager multiplies his effectiveness through working with others. There are two ways he can do this. Firstly by developing his team members and raising their capabilities so that they can take on more. Secondly, it is through collaboration with others. In the rest of this book, we’ll discuss these two topics.
These days, it is not uncommon for a manager to perform multiple tasks simultaneously: read emails, talk on the phone and gather her documents for a meeting that is about to take place. If you are one of these people, you will inevitably become highly stressed, frenzied, distracted and irritable.
By multi-tasking on a 24/7 basis, you risk overloading your brain. Instead of helping you become more productive, it will do the reverse. Gradually, the brain loses its capacity to focus fully and thoroughly on anything at one time. There is even a name for this real but unrecognized neurological phenomenon—attention deficit trait (ADT)1, according to Dr. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist who specializes in cognitive and emotional health. The core symptoms are inner frenzy and difficulties in staying organized, setting priorities and managing time.
ADT is turning many otherwise gifted people into underperformers. Your brain will work better if you slow down a little and take one step at a time. Perhaps the idiom “More haste, less speed” bears more wisdom than we think.
As a sanity check, look at your diary once in a while. For those on Microsoft Outlook, scan your calendar. A clear sign of trouble will be back-to-back meetings day after day. In other words, you have a chock-a-block schedule. Some may derive a perverse, almost masochistic, pleasure out of this as it shows and makes them feel that they are working very hard. In effect though, it is a plight not much different from that of a hamster on its wheel. Who’s running the show? The hamster or the wheel?
I recommend that you think long and hard about this. Start to clear the deck, so to speak. It is good practice to have some white space in your diary. It may be just a 30-minute slot.
Use it to catch a breather and get some perspective. Also, it acts as a buffer in case someone wants to meet you to discuss something important. This could be a subordinate who needs help urgently. Nothing turns your people off more than to know that you are fully booked and they will have to wait till the next month to see you.
Set aside a few minutes to reflect at the end of the day. What have you done today? Are there things that you did which perhaps should not have been done? Managers who are always on the go and have endless items on their To Do list are doing themselves and their people no favour, to put it mildly. Less is sometimes more. The Chinese have a phrase for this—wei wu wei—which literally reads “doing not doing”. Let’s remember to slow down in order to speed up.
Very importantly, connect with your family. Allocate some time for yourself to do what will nourish your soul. Do some exercise, relax and get adequate sleep. Soon, you will begin each day with a spring in your step and a fresh perspective that comes only when the body and mind have been recharged. We’ll discuss more about this in Chapter 25.
♦ Failure to plan is planning to fail.
♦ Before rushing to act, think about the 80/20 principle.
Q1: Refer to the Importance vs Urgency matrix. Why will working on tasks or issues in Quadrant 4 reduce the need to work on Quadrants 1 and 2? Is there any harm in ignoring matters in Quadrant 3?
Q2: If you were Raja in the anecdote, how will you prioritize your workday now so that you can enhance your productivity significantly?
Q3: When you faced with too many items in Quadrant 4, how can you make them more manageable?