Important Thing First

What this episode covers

When you are organizing your day, you want to put your important things first. That means you are accomplishing a task that will move you closer to your goal before anything in your day has a chance to distract you. We see this happen so much. You get to the office with all intention to get to work and bust out that To-Do list. However, the phone starts to ring, you get a text message, someone walks in your office, etc. All of the sudden, your To-Do list is out the window and you are lucky if you ever get to come back to it. When I work in my corporate job, I hear about this problem all the time. Other attorneys say things like how much they love to work on the weekends because no one bothers them. To help us decide what is important, and what can be delegated, we can use an Eisenhower Box. Everything we need to do in a day, week, or month should be dumped into one of these boxes. The items that will help you accomplish your goals will likely be in the upper right box (important, not urgent). These are the items you want to make time for and the important things you want to do first. Once you have an important, but not urgent, item or two accomplished, you can turn to your important and urgent items. These are items that you need to do right now. These may be emergencies that need your attention. I’m not telling you to ignore these emergencies when you walk into your office. However, use your judgment. If you think it can wait, accomplish your important, but not urgent, item first. The rest of your To-Do’s can be placed in not important, but urgent, or not important and not urgent. If the item is at least urgent, delegate it to someone who is paid to do your work. For those of us who are self-employed, These are items you schedule for one specific time during the day around everything else you have to get done. For the not important and not urgent items, try to disregard those all together. Once you have everything dumped into this Box, schedule an important, but not urgent, item first in your day. Start with important things first. I hope you love the show!

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