MFSA111: Leaving The Right Things Undone

Much has been said about the importance of time management. When time is tight and competing priorities overlap, it can be easy to succumb to a sense of guilt that things may be missed or not prioritised appropriately. I had a bit of an epiphany from an article I read a few years ago – a lightbulb moment after years of reflecting on how to best manage my time, where I realised that it was just as much my energy that I needed to better manage. Doing stuff is hard, and is made harder by not being in the right headspace for the task or project at hand. Determining what needs to be done against both objective priority and in-the-moment capacity is as much art as it is science, and the reality of knowledge work is that there is never enough time or energy to get everything done to the standard it deserves. Sometimes all we can do is work to the moment as best we can, and hope we are leaving the right things undone.