Chapter 18
Managing the Minutiae
You settle into your desk at work, wake up your laptop, and scan today's to-do list. Fifty-four items. A little light today.
In reality, you're not going to get 54 things done during the workday, but tackling some of these tasks means not tackling others. Which means they'll haunt you on tomorrow's list, which probably already includes items from last year.
Who invented the stupid to-do list anyway?
Today's worker is drowning in to-dos. The volume of tasks you and your employees must manage leads to an inevitable sense of overload. Sixty-four percent of workers younger than age 34 report feeling overwhelmed at work. So do 59 percent of their colleagues ages 35 to 54.1
Task lists continue to grow in the constantly connected workplace, forcing us to differentiate each task's importance. But how do we know where to start?
Most workers let their inboxes dictate importance or let their to-do lists assign equal value to every item. Either way, most of us attack the easy stuff first.
This morning, I had 67 e-mails, a flight itinerary to review, some personal accounting, three phone calls, and this chapter to write. The latter required the most focus. So, of course, I was tempted to handle e-mails, book travel, and make my calls first. Dopamine flows when we check off lots of little items on our lists.
But the most important item was the chapter. Almost every other task could have waited until after lunch and my post-carbohydrate drag.
My answer to the temptation was something I aptly label my warmup lap. I quickly checked e-mail, made a prioritized list, and even knocked out a few easy and time-sensitive items to get moving. It didn't take me very long, and wasn't a bottomless pit of procrastination, but it got me mentally ready to really work. Then I tackled the chapter.
The key to the warmup lap, however, is to make sure it's really just a warmup and not a full marathon. During a recent talk I gave in Scottsdale, Arizona, I wanted to hike the famous Camelback Mountain. It looked pretty close to my hotel, so I thought, Why not jog to it and then hike up? Turns out large objects look close by for a long time. I ended up doing a long run to get a great Instagram photo of me near (or I think near) the mountain followed by a long jog back to the hotel. I never got to the hike because I wasted all my resources on the run. And it's a shame because the thing I really wanted to do was the hike itself.
This is the challenge most of us and our teams face. In a workplace buzzing with distractions, finding effective and realistic ways to prioritize has never been more vital.
So how do we choose what to work on when we have too much to work on? Delineation and delegation.
Delineation
Delineation is more than just prioritization. It's the allocation of time plus the ability to sort masses of data into ordered and actionable information. It's a plan of attack. We need to move from the traditional to-do list to structured prioritization based on the needs of the particular day.
First, identify your need. I have absorbed countless books and workshops on unique and sometimes contradictory task-management systems. But they all agree on one thing: Take a few minutes at the start of the day to plan. This is not just a classic problem of productivity; it's a distinct challenge of our times. The volume of information demanding our attention has a hidden consequence: We lose the ability to differentiate between what's important and what's not. As Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens tweeted, “When you are hunting elephants, don't get distracted chasing rabbits.” The problem is everything feels like an elephant when it's all running straight for us.
Literally, just a few minutes each day can save you hours. Don't sit down and ask yourself, “What would be easy to do?” or “What would take a lot of items off my list?” Ask instead, “What do I really need to accomplish today?”
The lists I make don't assign equal value to every item. I organize what to work on when, placing tasks in one of four categories: diamonds, dollars, dirt, and dimes.
Diamonds
The most mentally arduous tasks—diamonds—remind us why it's called work. But these items determine the success of my day. When I finish them, my sense of accomplishment soars because I've put a deposit on my future. These tasks are, therefore, as valuable as diamonds.
Usually, I schedule only a few of them, rarely more than three or four. It's okay to have just one (like I did today).
The key is to never assign a task you can't finish in one day. If it's too big for that, shrink the scope. Instead of “write a book,” the task becomes “write Chapter 18.” As a side note, I do have a place where I list out major work for the week. I call that dynamite because it makes a major impact and you can't ignore it for long without serious consequences. Most of your daily diamonds will come from this list.
Always schedule diamonds for your most attentive time of the day. As we talked about in Chapter 6, this is the morning for the vast majority of us, though there are a precious few who do exceptional work further into the day while the rest of us long for our preschool nap mats. Also keep in mind our discussion in Chapter 6 about the importance of food and rest—you want to tackle your diamonds at your peak level of performance.
Dollars
I can do dollars on autopilot. Picking up laundry, sending a deadline reminder to my team, replying to simple e-mails. These tasks need to be done but don't require significant time or attention.
Dollars aren't super-valuable on their own, but they become valuable when multiplied. So that's how you should attack them—in bunches. Take a break from your mentally taxing diamond and churn out 10 dollars.
Dirt
It might seem odd, but this is the heart of the list. These are the items I let myself ignore…for now.
In the constantly connected workplace, we simply can't get to every task. It's like dirt—everywhere and impossible to remove completely.
People typically never create this list because it feels counterintuitive. Why write down something you won't do now? Here's why: Disengagement grows when people don't feel like they're getting work done; better to give up and watch cat videos.
Instead of giving up, label the task dirt. Yes, intentionally remove tasks that others want you to do when doing them would make you less effective.
For leaders, dirt opens the door to conversations about tasks your people aren't finishing. Ultimately, this will help everyone readjust priorities.
You can revisit these tasks when you have time. Dirt might even become diamonds next week, but for now, actual diamonds, as well as dollars, need your attention. By labeling tasks dirt, you clear space in your mind.
When it comes to your dirt list, keep these three things in mind:
- It's not a list of “never going to do these.” If it were that, it would just get deleted from the list.
- If you execute your day perfectly, your dirt list becomes the starting point for your next day's list.
- Any task you think you need to do gets automatically assigned to dirt because it's your ongoing list of future to-dos. Then move it to dollars or diamonds should it need to be done that day.
And don't worry: Great ideas will eventually glitter no matter what you call them now. Your dirt, if it's worth listing on your to-do list, will always eventually become a dollar or a diamond.
Dimes
I take the label for this secondary category from a friend whose grandfather did the dime-behind-the-ear trick. Dimes, then, are little surprises or treats.
A task becomes a dime when it's more fun or interesting than important. Maybe an article shared by a colleague or a LinkedIn seminar on creative writing. Dimes provide breaks and might even help professional development. But they're not urgent.
Here's an example of my to-do list I made using these categories (Figure 18.1).
Figure 18.1 D's Delineation Guide.
Delegation
I have a client who excelled at leading the largest annual fundraiser for a successful nonprofit. But she had to squeeze in the work because her boss delegated urgent tasks every day.
“I need a chart for the meeting this afternoon.”
“Call the national office and see what's holding up the funding.”
Everything was a fire that he seemed to trust only her to put out. The problem was that she essentially became the highest paid executive assistant in the organization. This goes to show that there is a right way and a wrong way to delegate tasks.
Some tasks do need to be on someone else's to-do list. Delegation doesn't just lighten your load; it gives your team a chance to grow and learn. I've met far too many leaders who try to do everything themselves, taking pride in working 14-hour days. Their work suffers.
I've also seen the opposite. Despite conventional leadership gurus saying otherwise, the top concern today isn't that type A leaders don't delegate enough. It's that these leaders waste their people's resources asking for things they could get themselves through, say, a simple search. (Your employees aren't Siri, so why would you ask them what year Facebook went public?)
Leaders with this mindset ask for what's easy without considering the tasks their employees won't be doing as a result. Everything has a cost, even if you don't see it or feel it immediately.
Even worse, many leaders provide no context or clear picture for how their requests connect to frontline goals. So, the team jumps in without the ability to accurately adjust workloads.
These employees would love to work on their diamonds and ignore the dirt. The trouble is they don't know how and lack the information to differentiate between the two.
If delegating is easy for you, it's probably hard on your team. Before handing off a task, consider workload and whether your request is the best use of your team's resources and talents. It is helpful to consider your employees' attention resources in aggregate. Rather than simply thinking that delegating something will save you time, realize that you are paying everyone on your team for their attention and you are the steward of those resources. Just like switching tasks costs you time, there is a cost to delegation. It doesn't mean you shouldn't delegate; it just means you must be aware of whether you are doing a bad transaction for your own attention bank account.
For this reason, it's very helpful to designate the tasks you are delegating as either diamonds, dollars, or dirt or dimes. By doing so, you can prioritize what you'll pass along and what you won't, and you'll help your team know what is most important for them to spend their time and energy on.
Take a Minute
What does all of this look like for you today?
Before starting the next chapter, take a piece of paper and make a task list for today (or tomorrow if it's nighttime). What are your diamonds, dollars, dirt, and dimes? Anything need to be delegated?
What's the one task that, if finished, would make you feel amazing? When is the best time to do it?
Encourage your team to make their own lists and ask the same questions.