It’s easy to spend your week putting out fires. You wake up on a Monday morning, ready for a big week of work ahead. You’re going to take on some significant projects this week, and really get some stuff done.
Then the requests start coming in:
• Something’s wrong, and it needs to be fixed ASAP.
• A manager emails with requests that require immediate attention.
• A colleague needs help on a project that has to launch in mere hours.
• A key tool breaks, and it’s all hands on deck to make things right.
The week goes on like that: Urgent project after urgent project, until you look up on a Friday and realize that you never got the chance to do the work you promised yourself you would do.
Don’t let the urgent drown out the important. Make sure you block out time for the big, focused work. Otherwise, it’s too easy to go through the week putting out fires without ever actually getting to the work you really want to do.
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That photo of Jersey City at sunset comes via Uvi D on Unsplash. There’s no real reason why I chose that photo for this post — I just thought it looked nice.