(January 22, 2025 Newsletter)

As I write these words, I have a few items on my to-do list that needed to get done, like yesterday. And yet, here I am, still writing this week’s newsletter.
I feel the tension that many of my clients feel. This thing has to get done, but so do all those other things. I literally feel it in my chest, a warmth with which I’m familiar (and don’t like).
It seems that no matter where I start, it might be the wrong choice.
How do you set your next steps when staring at an intimidating to-do list?
Why it matters
Your time is limited as it is, so it’s a shame to waste time determining what to do instead of getting to the work itself.
The more you can simplify by setting guiding principles for yourself, the less daunting it will feel when such dilemmas emerge.
The false choice
“Should I do the important or urgent?” sets up a binary in our minds: this or that?
The question in and of itself is flawed. The Eisenhower/Covey Matrix, which introduced the concept of important/urgent, wasn’t a scale, but a 2x2.
As Stephen Covey wrote, "The key to effective time management is understanding what is urgent and important, and prioritizing tasks accordingly."

When everything feels like “both”
I’ve had this conversation with clients who say, “But Maya, the reason most of my tasks are in Q1 (Important and Urgent) is that everything is equally both.”
I hear their concern, but see it differently. If you think of these four quadrants not as buckets but actual graphs where you could put x’s down for each item, some tasks would rise to the top right corner and others would be closer to the center.
Meaning, while all Q1 tasks are important and urgent, not all are EQUALLY important and urgent.
Set your criteria
Start by bucketing the tasks or projects into the four quadrants. The next step is placing them more accurately on the 2x2.
What factors should you consider when determining what’s really important and urgent and what’s only sort-of important and urgent?
Out before in – I learned this principle early in my career. First get stuff out that involve others before getting to the tasks that are internal.
Size or complexity – How fast can you knock it off the list? Some folks like to bang out a bunch of smaller items before getting to the bigger ones, but the danger is that the day has gone by and you haven’t started tackling the most complex item. If that’s your tendency, ask yourself what can be broken down into smaller pieces.
How flexible is the deadline? We all know that some deadlines are harder than others. What are the consequences of getting to something later than you meant to? Higher-consequence items should rise to the top of the list.
Is this a pattern or an outlier? If you tend to blow a certain recurring deadline (or deadlines with a certain colleague), you may be chipping away at your credibility with crucial partners. If you have a track record of reliability, though, your partners will be more forgiving.
What can be delegated? Maybe the most important criteria here – if there is a big project and the clock is ticking, but also a bunch of other competing priorities, what can you ask others to do to help get it over the finish line?
Final thought: One of the determining factors for making this into a habit is self-compassion. Being extra hard on yourself will prevent you from getting into a good rhythm, so as Ted Lasso says, “Be a goldfish.”
The Coaching Corner
Connect the takeaways and action items
Get into the habit at the end of meetings of not only asking your team members to summarize the to-dos that came out of the meeting, but also asking them to articulate why those items are important.
This can actually help the person on your team ensure that the spot on the Eisenhower/Covey Matrix is clear to both of you.
A few questions that can be helpful here:
Is there anything on this list that you anticipate could clash with other priorities?
Among these items (and the others on your list) how are you going to know where to start?
[On a specific item] When you get that done, what else is it going to unlock?
Recommendations
Seems especially pertinent to this week’s topic: last week’s HBR Ideacast podcast episode on “Dealing with Perfectionism.” Even though it’s a topic I’ve studied, I still got a few new nuggets and perspectives from this interview.
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