Prioritizing tasks when your plate is too full...

Frequently I find myself in a situation where I have numerous things on my plate and I just don't know where to start. Part of this comes from my tendency to over commit (and for  mass chaos) -- but let's be honest... I thrive on a bit too full plate. It's like the quote from Lucille Ball (who I love..),

  If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.  

I feel like when I am at my busiest I am also at my best. When my boss hasn't quite given me enough work and I know I will have plenty of time to complete tasks, that is when I get distracted easily and carried into other things... for better or worse...

However, for me to manage those times when the plate is crammed a little too high and I start to feel stressed out,  I like to do a prioritizing exercise I will call the "Important/Urgent" Matrix. I use a white board and draw a grid that looks a little like the image to the left (minus the reminders within each box).

I usually take sticky notes and write out each and every task that is on my plate. Sometimes I do this exclusively for work, but often it is a bit of everything that is weighing on my mind and needs to be documented. Once all my stickies are in a stack, I start putting them on the matrix according to how urgent they are (due today or in 3 months?) and how Important they are (will this make/break my career or is very important to a client/boss etc, or just a "Nice to have" I will get to if I have time?)

For example, reporting my hours each week on Friday AM is not extremely important, however it is due on Friday and therefore urgent. Completing my ethics training is important and required for me to keep my job, but it is not due until the end of May (thus important and not urgent).

From this exercise, I walk away with a "plan of attack" and feel a lot more capable of achieving the tasks ahead of me. The ones I immediately take off the white board and start plowing through are the Urgent and Important (and I try to do them in the order of highest urgency/importance). I typically don't have the luxury of delegating the ones in quadrant 3 so I have to do those first and then quadrant 2 and 4. However -- even if I don't go through each of the exercises or complete each of the tasks in all quadrants, the practice of taking a step back, reviewing everything to do and prioritizing is really renewing and calming for me.

How do you manage everything when your plate is a little too full?

some thoughts on expectations and emotional investment

I had a really interesting experience around expectations this morning.

Today I was slated to present in meeting that was anticipated to not go so well (sensitive/stressful topic). I knew going in... this might get interesting... this meeting might crash and burn... how is this not going to blow up on me? And for me and my perfectionist nature this was more than a little disconcerting... how am I going to manage the conversation so that it doesn't get sticky?

This morning as I was getting ready and thinking about the meeting, I decided that whatever the outcome of the meeting was... it was not going to define me or my day. So I consciously chose to NOT allow myself to get worked up and throw the towel in emotionally if things went bad.

So this morning I walked through my material. And you know what? It went REALLY well. Walking away from the meeting my jaw almost dropped. What on earth just happened?

As I have thought on this a little more... I realize that sometimes I put all of my "emotional" eggs in one basket.  If x doesn't go well it can completely define me for that day, crush my spirit, crash my momentum of excitement and energy. It can be anything, something at work, something for a Church calling, something in my personal life, something I am passionate about that others aren't as excited about.

It's not that I don't think we should aim to achieve goals and shoot for the stars, I just think it may be healthy to not "expect" too much, but rather be delighted when things go well (as opposed to depressed when expectations are not met.)

I read this really interesting article yesterday on tithing your time.  Here is one of my favorite quotes that really resonated with me:

"A simple example is when Callie was first born, she didn’t sleep a MINUTE the first two nights. I felt riddled with anxiety as soon as the sun would go down, thinking, “I wonder if I’ll get any sleep at all tonight.” I was hoarding my time. I was used to eight hours of sleep. I expected eight hours of sleep. I deserved eight hours of sleep. Callie was taking hours from me that were mine.

On the third night I tried something different. I thought, “Tonight I expect zero hours of sleep. I am going to have an up-all-night sleepover with my precious baby girl. We’re going to rock and dance and sing and watch some tv. And we will not sleep. If she wants to sleep I will take it as an added bonus. A gift. But I expect zero. ” And then……she did! I probably got about 4 hours. Which in new-mom-hood is HUGE. It felt like a gift. Not an expectation."

I think because I didn't "expect" for things to go flawless in the meeting this morning, and because I told myself beforehand that my abilities, talents and confidences would not be changed by the outcome of the meeting, it was a GIFT that it went so well.


I  think the verdict is still not entirely clear.  I have written before about how I always assume people/things/intentions are good, I think this generally means that through my positive nature I expect goodness. But I feel like I get burned a fair amount doing that. As I mature and grow a little, my experience has been lately to maybe hope for the good, but be cautious with your heart in setting your expectations too high. Sometimes you have to manage your emotional investment to help maintain your sanity.

Anyway. Maybe this is me losing my naivety or become a bit more jaded... but regardless it feels like an aha! moment.