Prioritise like a machine (whilst remaining human)
Up until very recently, I was busy all the time. I run a solo business and for freelancers, solopreneurs and other self directed folk, busy feels like it should be a good thing. But it’s not — it’s a trap, and it sucks.
It’s a trap because it eats up all your time and energy, prevents you from achieving your long term goals and impacts your physical, mental and emotional health.
If you’ve ever felt that you just don’t have enough time, or that you seem to spend all your time firefighting and never get to the important stuff — read on.
Killing the busy.
This is one of those problems that’s so predominant that it’s almost invisible. We are all bombarded with things we could be doing all the time. Every day we deal with news, social media, tv, streaming services, advertising on every flat surface— not to mention our own to-do lists, goals and dreams.
We’re humans — following up new ideas and imagining new futures is very much part of what we do. It’s an incredible and powerful thing, but with so much available to us, it’s very easy to be constantly distracted, bouncing from thing to thing, and never actually getting anywhere.
Time is the most precious resource we have. I work for myself and when you work for yourself, you become all too aware of it. Usually you’ll have multiple clients and projects on the go, all with their own schedules and deadlines, and then there is the constant stream of other stuff that needs to be done — business development, keeping the books up to date, even having the odd holiday here and there.
I found, I spent most of my time and energy just keeping all the plates spinning. The stuff that didn’t have immediate deadlines, but was just important to me, always got left behind. These are the ideas I want to develop, the products I wanted to build, the connections I wanted to make, the fun I wanted to have — they always ended up taking a back seat.
I always figured that it things would calm down soon and i’d deal with those things then. Trouble is, that time never comes — unless you make it happen.
The truth is, you have all the time you need, it’s just a question of prioritising.
How I prioritise
Prioritising is a critical skill and I think that to do it well, I need to have a system in place. Why? Because I usually only think about prioritising when I’m up against it. I’m stressed, i’m emotional, i’m in fight or flight mode and my decision making is flawed. If I’ve got a procedure in place then I can work through that and make good decisions about what I should be doing, regardless of how i’m feeling, and let myself off the rest with a clear conscience.
So this is my system to sort it all out and regain focus. It also has some brilliant side effects! The first step is to stop do a bit of a brain dump onto a bit of paper, getting everything I have floating around in my head out and nailed down to the paper where I can see it.
Then I go through each one in turn and ask myself 3 questions.
Question 1 - How urgent is this?
I start with this because it’s and easy one to answer. This is mostly down to time and deadlines. I score each of them 0–10 with 0 being not urgent at all and 10 being scary-nightmare-panic-stations-urgent. I think for many of us, when the pressures on, this is all we do, which is why our non-urgent, but actually really important stuff never gets done.
Question 2 — How important is this to me personally?
I like to focus on the word personal here. The last question was about the rest of the world, this one redresses the balance.
By ranking to the same score, 0–10 with 0 being not important at all and 10 being critical to us personally. This really helps to get things into their proper perspective
Remember, the goal isn’t “getting things done” — it’s a life well lived.
I find just by adding this step were really starting to use our time for our own best interests and that feels great.
By doing this step methodically, you’re really putting things in context of your life. It’s surprising how many of the things that cause us so much stress are just not that important.
An excellent side effect is that I often find that my stress levels really start to drop at this point, and my motivation and enthusiasm for things start to come back.
Question 3: How bad would it be if I just didn’t do this at all?
The first two questions are basically the Eisenhower Matrix which is all about focusing on the important, rather than just the urgent. But Eisenhower didn’t have the internet to contend with so this is a new addition.
It’s actually quite fun. Go through each one in turn and think about what would happen if you just didn’t do it at all. Then score them from 0–10 with 0 being totally inconsequential and 10 being actually the end of the world as you know it.
This is useful for a number of reasons.
- There are often many things we can just not do with little or no consequences at all.
- Often we panic far more than we should, getting all worked up about things that don’t really matter than much. You might have to ask for an extension, loose a little money, be a bit embarrassed perhaps, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s often not that big a deal.
- The thought of just never achieving any of our long term goals can be just heartbreaking. Taking a second to consider that if you don’t prioritise them, it’s likely they will not happen at all, is really powerful and it has a great motivating effect.
And then what?
So I then just add the scores up so that I have a ranked list of things which takes into account short term external pressures and long term personal goals. I have a clear idea of where I should spend my time and energy to get the best results.
There is usually a load of things I can just decide not to do and cross them off, which feels great.
But better than that, I’m feeling calm and in control, like i’m in charge and not just reacting to the world around me all the time — which is awesome!
This is what works for me. As soon as I start to feel that rising feeling, a couple of minutes with a pad of paper is all that I need to get myself back on form.
If you have something that works for you — please share it so we can all try it out too!
Now with added software?
I work through this process a lot and have built a little piece of software to make it easier and quicker and it’s part of my overwhelm first aid kit. I plan to put it up on the web for people to use (free of charge!). If you think that might be useful and would like me to let you know when it’s ready for you to play with, sign up to the mailing list here. https://www.getdrip.com/forms/421920631/submissions/new
I’m working on a project called Helm. It’s about helping us self-directed folk: freelancers, entrepreneurs and solo-businesses, to take control and achieve their goals in a positive and healthy way.
By sharing the issues we’ve come across and solutions that we’ve found we can make things better for us all.
You can find out more about why here: Battling Overwhelm
I’ll be posting updates to this post and about Helm in general. If you would like to hear more, please sign up to the Helm mailing list here:https://www.getdrip.com/forms/441062528/submissions/new
Have a great day :)
Mike
