Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:00:49: Best intentions vs day-to-day reality

00:01:58: Managing monkeys

00:03:27: Idea for action 1: urgent important matrix

00:04:33: Idea for action 2: win watch

00:06:16: Go-to guru

00:06:22: Relevant podcast episode

00:00:00: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast.  And this episode is part of our Skills Sprint series.  We've recorded 20 episodes, each of them are less than seven minutes long, and they're designed to help you build some career development momentum. 

So, in every episode, we're going to talk about Squiggly Skill, share an idea for action from each of us, and then we'll give you a go-to guru and a podcast episode so you can learn a bit more.  And we really want you to turn this Skills Sprint into your learning streak. So for everybody who completes the entire sprint, that's 20 days, we're going to offer you a free Five Skills to Succeed in a Squiggly Career virtual workshop with Sarah and me in September.  All you've got to do is listen and do a bit of learning, and then post about your progress on social and tag us.  We're @amazingif in your post, and then we will be in touch.

Sarah Ellis: So in this skills sprint, we're talking about prioritisation, which I don't think there's anybody who gets this right all of the time.  So actually, please let us know what your secret formula is, because we all feel like we are juggling lots of different work and priorities in our Squiggly Careers. 

And I think often, I hear people describing feeling like they may be stuck in a tunnel of troubleshooting or firefighting or sometimes doing other people's work. So you know when you start, I always imagine this, you start on a Monday and you're like, "I've got all of this clarity and I've really thought about what I need to do in what order, and I feel really in control and this is how my week is going to work".  And then by 11.00am, the emails have started coming in, the team messages have started and everything goes out of the window. 

So I think we often start with best intentions and we've all come across some of those prioritisation tools or techniques.  But I think people's reality often feels quite far away from that sort of calmness of, "Oh yes, I do everything I need to do, all in the right order, all in the right way".  It just doesn't feel like that's our day-to-day reality.

Helen Tupper: And we talked before in the podcast about managing monkeys.  So, monkeys are like all the tasks that we've got to do, and sometimes we get overwhelmed by all the monkeys that we are carrying.  And I do think it's useful to reflect on the direction of your monkeys when we're talking about prioritisation.  Are you grabbing more monkeys?  Like, am I going to Sarah, "Oh, I'll get that done. 

Don't worry, I can do that for you.  Well, I'll sort that out", so I'm basically grabbing all of these monkeys.  Or, are people throwing the monkeys at you?  So, is Sarah going, "Could you just… and if you could also… and by Friday, would you add this to your list?"  It's because no one can cope with too many monkeys, and in order to take control of them, you do need to understand what direction they're coming from.  So, useful to reflect on that as well.

Sarah Ellis: And there's a brilliant quote from Jim Collins, which I think sums up our aspiration here.  And he says, "Greatness, it turns out, is largely a function of conscious choice and discipline".  Sounds hard, doesn't it?

Helen Tupper: Harsh, but true!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, but I like that kind of harsh, but fair reflection there in terms of what he's saying.  I think when I've spoken to people where you think, "Wow, their world of work and just their life must be really overwhelming.  How are they making that work?"  I think they sort of live and breathe this.  They've taken a lot of intentional accountability for how they spend their time and the choices they make, and it's a continual effort and something they keep coming back to.  So, I don't think there is any secret formula that any of us are missing out on but I think it's that recognition that this is something you have to keep working on.

Helen Tupper: So, my idea for action here is an oldie and I know some people won't love this one, but it's the urgent important matrix which is, I think it's Eisenhower, is it Eisenhower this one?  So, it's just the high importance, low importance, high urgency, low urgency, and then you plot your things out.  And loads of people critique it, but the reason I like it is because I think if you're feeling like you're struggling with things, you can feel a bit out of control, and I always find that a matrix is a good starting point for clarity. 

And so, you can draw it out, you can think about all the things you've got to do, and you can start to plot them.  And whether that gives you a bit of clarity on, "Okay, well, that's what I'll work on now", or whether it just gives you a starting point to a conversation, because I could show my matrix with all of my things in to Sarah and say, "Okay, so I think this is where I'm going to start", and Sarah might say, "Well, hang on a minute, let's discuss".  It just gives you a way of getting this out of your head and into something you can move forward or talk about with someone else.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think often when I've done urgent important matrices, and people could probably guess this, what you just realise is you're spending all the time on the urgent stuff and none of the time on progressing the important things, which brings you on to my idea for action here, which has worked so well for us.  We've been using this for about a year now, and it's a really simple technique that we call a win watch.

So, I'm somebody who naturally likes to think strategically and quite long term, but we do win watches by quarter.  And Helen and I actually create our win watch together, and it's six to eight things.  We try to make it quite visual, literally, but it takes about two minutes to create because it's not very nicely produced.  But it's, this quarter, what are the things that we really want to deliver?  And essentially, I suppose, it's what would be in the top right-hand side of that matrix; what feels urgent and important for the next three months together? 

So, I think this would be really interesting to do as a team as well, and you could also do it individually. The reason it helps me to prioritise is it gives me an anchor to keep coming back to, to think, "Am I making progress on the right things in the right order?"  It encourages me to just keep asking those questions.  It also helps me to feel good when things feel really overwhelming or there's loads of urgent stuff coming your way.  I go back to the win watch and think, "Okay, but don't worry because you've still made progress on a couple of those important things". 

So it helps me to visualise that progress and also to make some active choices sometimes about not winning. So there are always things on our win watch that don't happen, but I feel like we always have a conversation about them.  We sort of actively opt out and say, "Oh, actually, that one doesn't feel right any more", or something new has come our way that feels more important, so we're going to swap those things out.  Because I think often, prioritising comes from being really transparent about how you're spending your time and sometimes that clarity is missing.  And I think the win watch has always really helped me to just have the focus that I've needed to keep things moving forward.

Helen Tupper: And our go-to guru on the topic of prioritisation is Greg McKeown who has written a very popular book called Essentialism; and the podcast that we'd recommend, if you would like to listen and learn a bit more, is episode 95 of the Squiggly Careers podcast on How to prioritise Your Work.

Sarah Ellis: So, thanks for listening to this Skills Sprint, we hope you're finding them useful.  We'd love you to share and subscribe so you don't miss a sprint, but that's everything for this episode, so bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone!