Fighting back against urgent and convenient work
It’s too easy to spend the whole day working but never do the work that really matters. You can sit down at your computer at 9 AM and get into emails, and then Slack, look at some PRs, poke your head into Asana, help a few colleagues out with some questions and by the time you look up, the whole day is up. For many people, this is the default state of work. Over the years, I’ve come up with a few techniques I use to fight back against the wave or urgent and convenient work that falls into my lap.
Plan the night before
I like to list my top priorities for the work day out the night before. I don’t need to timebox every minute of my day, I just need to make sure that the top 2-3 things I want to do tomorrow are on my list for the next day. That way, when I show up in the morning and finalize my plan for the day, I’ve got a reference point for what I believed to be important before all those emails came in. If I don’t do this, my inbox becomes my point of reference and I end up riding the wave of inbound work.
On a personal note, I find the morning a hard time to be thoughtful and reflective about what to do. I’m usually rested, caffeinated, and raring to do something. If I haven’t figured out where to spend that energy and motivation in advance it gets misdirected towards convenient work.
Leave room for urgent work
Most of the urgent work that arrives in your inbox each day is stuff you’ll probably need to do at some point. I try and live in acceptance of that rather than constantly trying to re-prioritize, defer and mid-wit my way into some performative productivity framework full of flow-charts and prioritization rules.
I just set aside 90 minutes each day where I respond to all my notifications and then use the remaining time to tackle all random small inbound tasks people have asked me for. I lose a chunk of my day to this everyday but I also don’t stress about random stuff people ask me to do. This lets me balance responsiveness and my need for easy dopamine hits while leaving time to get real work done. If someone asks me to do something that won’t fit in this 90 minute window, then it gets added to my “queue” and it has to get planned into my day. The vast majority of little things just get bundled into this time, get done, and there’s no stress.
The key here is figuring out how much time you should be allocating for random stuff. Too much and you never make progress. Too little and you constantly feel overwhelmed and behind.
Write down weekly objectives and tie daily work back to weekly objectives
I also like to plan out my objectives for the week. I find it’s best to do this on Friday or over the weekend instead of waiting till Monday. If I wait till Monday, it’s hard for me to overcome the currents of work that are already in motion and trying to suck me in. Weekly objectives are another “anchor” to what’s worth doing. When you know what you should be doing, it’s easier to figure out what you should say no to. I use this to inform my planning the night before too, there should be a task tied to a weekly objective each day of the week.
Take vacations
When I return from vacation, I use the first day back as a catch-up day. I do nothing but respond to notifications, catch up on what happened, and deal with things people asked me for. If I was gone for more than a week, there’s always more to review than I can in a single day so I start skimming things and giving individual items less thought.
When I’m working every day, every little things feels terribly important; I feel like I need to get involved in every little decision. But with multiple days away from the urgency and excitement of work, it’s easier to see what discussions or tasks got done without much of my involvement. I mentally note the things that didn’t really need my input as the type of things I can care about a little less going forward. Over time, this helps me fine-tune where I shine the spotlight of my time and attention.
Half days
A couple times a year, when I travel, I’ll work shorter days so I have more quality time with my family. When I cut down my working hours, I’m left with a choice, fill it with junk work or fill it with deep meaningful work. In order to actually move things forward, I’m forced to cut out the junk work. Again, I mentally note what kinds of junk work I skipped out on so the next time I’m propositioned to do junk work I know it’s safe to pass on. Along with vacations, this is probably the best way to hone your sense of what is junk work and what is real work over the long run.
It’s got the same effect as being on a diet. If you could only eat 1500 calories per day this week and still be active and energetic what would you do? You’d probably cut out the sodas and double down on your oatmeal and eggs. It’s very hard to have this clarity unless you’ve got real restrictions in place. A bullshit task or a cookie doesn’t hurt as much during the normal course of events but during a half-day or diet, it could be the difference between success and failure.
In summary, there are a four principles here, which are all ways of manipulating your perspective about what’s really important:
- Figure out what’s important at times when you aren’t overwhelmed with urgent and convenient work.
- Knowing what’s important gives you a comparison point to evaluate all new possibilities against.
- When you step away from things molehills don’t feel like mountains.
- Reduce your capacity so you have clarity about where you should or should not allocate your capacity.
