Short stories from a longer Career; Part 1
Don’t just react!
How we use our time is vital to long term success.

When our activities fall into the ‘urgent’ layer we tend to be reacting to outside ( or certainly operational )pressures. I come from a consultancy background and being responsive to customers requirements is a critical activity. It feels urgent and since it is the only source of income, it is certainly important. However, if one is not careful, all available time can fall into this layer. And a lot of it will be time wasted either with unproductive customers or chasing internally driven activities which add little or no value ( even consultancy can act like a bureaucracy at times).
So it is important to record and analyse how time is being used when the activity feels urgent. Really separate out what is important and therefore produces value from what is not and so doesn’t. The plan is to allocate no time to the top left box.
The top right box will contain activities which are operational and tactical. The test is the production of real value in the tactical horizon. Strategy does not get done urgently so such activities won’t feature here.
How much of total time should be allocated to top right activities depends on the role and the nature of the business model but in most cases it will be the significant majority of time.
Activities in the ‘non urgent’ layer tend to be under our own control. This is where strategy gets done and long term investment in organisational capability rests. Most commentators think once again the mission is to eliminate all time spent in the bottom left box since it is not important and time is precious. Whilst I agree with this generally, I used to encourage some minor allocation in this box. I described what I did in here as dreaming but it is really unstructured thinking or left field research. At some point the activity should be tested and brought into the bottom right box but Organisations need disruptive creative input and this is where it can be sourced.
Again the proportion of time spent in the bottom right box is role and organisation dependent. If the CEO is spending 80% of her time in top right activities and so 20% in bottom right there is a problem.
As ever, these models are there to help guide our thinking and action. They are not to be used to paralyse anyone or anything. But if you keep a time sheet anyway, it’s a good idea to check your activity log every now and again and see how time is being spent. You might just be stressed out doing somethings which don’t make a big difference and how crazy is that?
