Friday, February 09, 2007
Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers says: ' Important v. Urgent!
Two conflicting scales of priority that can seriously pull you apart!
You may see no great difference between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’. But as a motivational speaker on Time Management, I have taught many blue-chip managements an important difference between the two. See it this way:
With much effort, you’ve managed to clear aside a whole day for tackling a major problem that must be solved by the end of the week.
Just as you’re getting dug down deep into it, someone knocks on the door with one of those so-called panics, wanted for today, instantly snapping your concentration and putting you back in a shallow and superficial mode, from which no great insights are likely to flow.
The nuisance-value of this kind of interruption may be compared to an express train being derailed by a brick on the line - a little thing getting in the way of a big thing.
Yet it is very hard to walk away from that so-called emergency, however trivial. We are programmed to ‘drop everything’ and respond at once to anything that anyone chooses to call urgent.
Prioritising our tasks according to logic, not panic, is an increasingly vital part of Time Management. And the obvious first step is to define ‘Urgent’ and ‘Important’, relative to each other.
‘Important’ indicates a task that will impact heavily on the corporate agenda, with serious consequences if not performed in a reasonable interval.
‘Urgent’ indicates an emergency factor, with some degree of penalty if not performed at once.
This sets up four distinct categories of priority, and you should practise automatically classifying each task into one or other of these:
1. Important and urgent
2. Urgent but not important
3. Important but not urgent
4. Not urgent or important
Clearly, a No.1 task should not be interrupted on any account. And a No.4 task can safely be left till a quiet afternoon, or even dropped altogether.
It is the battle for attention between Nos. 2 and 3 that causes most arguments, and you need to have your policy worked out.
With a No.2 task - often quite a minor one - the temptation is to slip it in quickly ahead of the more important No.3., especially as postponing it would set up even more of an emergency. This looks logical enough. But you then have to find some way to stop people identifying you as ‘good scout’ and simply declaring urgency as a lazy way of getting quick service.
A No.3 task needs serious planning, in order to guarantee enough sustained concentration to deliver satisfactorily on time. When you’re dug deep into a No.3 and someone threatens you with a quick ‘panic’, you should question whether it’s really a No.4, and if not, whether this fairly minor task could be entrusted to someone else.
And other ways we can manage our time better…
· Dare to delegate
Yes, it can be hard to let go. But you’ll find that you do need to limit your availability. The power to delegate is identified as a key quality in top management.
· The Paper Tide
Ration paperwork ruthlessly. Bin what you can. Cut corners by phone. Even colour-coded folders and see-thru files can save crucial time.
· The art of prioritising
Amazingly, you can save up to 10 hours a week by keeping a Time Log, charting the progress of key agendas and rating your daily performance.
You can find out about these and many more aspects of Time Management in a major training toolkit: ‘Hurry Hurry! – Every Second Counts’. The true and false dynamics of urgency at work’, available right here on my website - www.carolespiers.com
Suitable for all levels of management and employees, this toolkit comes with Powerpoint sildes for easy presentation, as well as a workbook that can be copied in any number. It has proved equally popular in many different kinds of organisation, at seminars and training sessions, and also with my general audiences as a motivational speaker.
Click here to see full details and buy… See a useful improvement in your time management soon. http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=24
Motivational speaker Carole Spiers occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output.
Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com
You may see no great difference between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’. But as a motivational speaker on Time Management, I have taught many blue-chip managements an important difference between the two. See it this way:
With much effort, you’ve managed to clear aside a whole day for tackling a major problem that must be solved by the end of the week.
Just as you’re getting dug down deep into it, someone knocks on the door with one of those so-called panics, wanted for today, instantly snapping your concentration and putting you back in a shallow and superficial mode, from which no great insights are likely to flow.
The nuisance-value of this kind of interruption may be compared to an express train being derailed by a brick on the line - a little thing getting in the way of a big thing.
Yet it is very hard to walk away from that so-called emergency, however trivial. We are programmed to ‘drop everything’ and respond at once to anything that anyone chooses to call urgent.
Prioritising our tasks according to logic, not panic, is an increasingly vital part of Time Management. And the obvious first step is to define ‘Urgent’ and ‘Important’, relative to each other.
‘Important’ indicates a task that will impact heavily on the corporate agenda, with serious consequences if not performed in a reasonable interval.
‘Urgent’ indicates an emergency factor, with some degree of penalty if not performed at once.
This sets up four distinct categories of priority, and you should practise automatically classifying each task into one or other of these:
1. Important and urgent
2. Urgent but not important
3. Important but not urgent
4. Not urgent or important
Clearly, a No.1 task should not be interrupted on any account. And a No.4 task can safely be left till a quiet afternoon, or even dropped altogether.
It is the battle for attention between Nos. 2 and 3 that causes most arguments, and you need to have your policy worked out.
With a No.2 task - often quite a minor one - the temptation is to slip it in quickly ahead of the more important No.3., especially as postponing it would set up even more of an emergency. This looks logical enough. But you then have to find some way to stop people identifying you as ‘good scout’ and simply declaring urgency as a lazy way of getting quick service.
A No.3 task needs serious planning, in order to guarantee enough sustained concentration to deliver satisfactorily on time. When you’re dug deep into a No.3 and someone threatens you with a quick ‘panic’, you should question whether it’s really a No.4, and if not, whether this fairly minor task could be entrusted to someone else.
And other ways we can manage our time better…
· Dare to delegate
Yes, it can be hard to let go. But you’ll find that you do need to limit your availability. The power to delegate is identified as a key quality in top management.
· The Paper Tide
Ration paperwork ruthlessly. Bin what you can. Cut corners by phone. Even colour-coded folders and see-thru files can save crucial time.
· The art of prioritising
Amazingly, you can save up to 10 hours a week by keeping a Time Log, charting the progress of key agendas and rating your daily performance.
You can find out about these and many more aspects of Time Management in a major training toolkit: ‘Hurry Hurry! – Every Second Counts’. The true and false dynamics of urgency at work’, available right here on my website - www.carolespiers.com
Suitable for all levels of management and employees, this toolkit comes with Powerpoint sildes for easy presentation, as well as a workbook that can be copied in any number. It has proved equally popular in many different kinds of organisation, at seminars and training sessions, and also with my general audiences as a motivational speaker.
Click here to see full details and buy… See a useful improvement in your time management soon. http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=24
Motivational speaker Carole Spiers occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output.
Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com
# posted by Carole Spiers @ 8:16 AM 
