When I run a treatment group on productivity for people with ADHD, you can bet your bottom TikTok that one topic will always come up: prioritisation. We’ll start by looking at four task types in the famous ‘Eisenhower matrix’, and from there we’ll explore some prioritisation traps and how to overcome them.

The Eisenhower Matrix: Important and Urgent

This is generally considered the classic prioritisation method, and for good reason. Dwight D Eisenhower gave a speech in **year, saying **speech. This then became the foundation for the Eisenhower matrix, first written about by **person in **book.

So in the Eisenhower matrix we have four types of task: the Urgent and Important (Do Now), Important but not Urgent (Plan), Urgent but not Important (Delegate), and the Not Urgent Or Important (Stop). There are some clear implications here, one of which is: if a task is both important and urgent you need to do it pretty soon.

This is fine as far as it goes, but what if there are other tasks on your list besides the urgent and important ones: when will they get done? Should you be doing them at all? We’ll look at these task types one by one and consider some tips for each area.

Urgent and Important Trap: ‘Putting Out Fires’

These tasks are classed as ‘Do Now’ tasks: my clients often describe them as “tasks that need to be done now, and something bad will happen if you don’t do them”. This gets people going, because they combine two key motivators: an urgent deadline and a significant consequence. You can’t put them off (any more), and they get your adrenaline pumping.

The thing is that these tasks are important and need to be done: but if you’re only doing the urgent things all day, what about the non-urgent tasks that are also important? Not only will you have the constant stress of urgent tasks all day, but these urgent tasks will constantly be ‘pushing out’ the non-urgent tasks from your agenda. Often you’ll be constantly meeting deadlines at the expense of your own career development priorities, and you’ll be living with a high level of stress.

Here are some thoughts and ideas for people who get stuck in the ‘putting out fires’ trap:

• If you work for someone else, are they putting too much on your plate? You have the right to spend some time on career development, or even just to have the chance to check your emails or have a break. Talk to your boss, and see if some of these tasks can be assigned to someone else from time to time, so that you have some time in your day for other things. Bosses will often be quite happy for you to do loads of work (not for malicious reasons, but what boss wouldn’t want that?), but if you’re not careful you might be doing 6 days’ work in 5 days. Your boss may need to hire an extra person or spread the work around a bit: calmly discuss the problem and explain some of the things you’d like to have more time for, and see if they are willing to negotiate.
• If you work for yourself, are you saying ‘yes’ to too many jobs? This may occur for a number of reasons, one of which is under-charging for your work so that you have to be this busy just to make ends meet; or perhaps you worry that you need to take all the work you can get. Maybe take an honest look at how your week is looking and figure out if there’s something you can change: how could you get more of the jobs with the better hourly rate, so that you can have a bit more down-time and still make ends meet?
• Try to carve out time in your day for other stuff. If you have a calendar that others can ‘book appointments into’ then make sure certain parts of your day aren’t bookable. Maybe you’re only free from 10am to 4pm, leaving times at the start and end for other things. Maybe you put half-hour breaks in at 10:30 and 3pm, in addition to your lunch break, so that you can take a breath.
• Negotiate some ‘fire gaps’ or wiggle room. This is useful for people whose projects sometimes take longer than expected. If you book projects end-to-end, this is fine if everything takes exactly as long as you think it will or less: but this isn’t always how life works. It only takes one trickier-than-expected piece of work in the chain, and everything ends up getting pushed out or squeezed together. Perhaps you can schedule a free week in your diary every eight weeks, or maybe Friday mornings can always be free to allow for work that takes longer than expected. Allow for the inevitability of big fires ahead of time so they don’t burn you out.

Another thing that can lead to the ‘putting out fires’ trap is not tackling tasks until they’re urgent. This can mean that you don’t quite take advantage of the quiet periods, and then tasks build up and you have periods of time that are crazy-busy. So let’s talk about non-urgent (but important) tasks next.

Important but not Urgent Trap 1: ‘Not Due for Ages (Yet..)’

This one is pretty relatable I think: this is the deadline that seems too remote to worry about just now (until it isn’t), or the task that seems too too boring/unmotivating or too hard.

Let’s talk about this first type: deadlines that are far away .. until they’re not. The trouble is that they creep up on you, and then one day the deadline is very close and the task is still very big (and you still have to do the normal things, like go to meetings etc). Not fun times. Here are some tips so that you don’t fall into this trap:

• Try to see past this idea that you have all the time in the world: break the task down into chunks of 2-3 hours and schedule these into your diary. I know this sounds like more work, but it’s totally worth it. It usually helps you realise that you don’t have all the time in the world. The strategy of scheduling tasks into your diary around your other commitments is often referred to as [time blocking] and you’ll find a useful article on it here.
• Set an interim deadline, and be accountable to that. Where should you be with the task two weeks before the deadline? Set this as a goal, and if you need to bust your butt a little to reach it, that’s probably better than busting your butt a lot to reach the final deadline all in one go
• Have an accountability buddy. Tell someone what you’re working on and when you attend to have it done by. Maybe agree to meet to discuss progress.

What about if the task seems too boring/unmotivating or too hard? We’ve all been there! It just seems impossible to get started..

• Look at the reasons you’re feeling unmotivated. Is this a task you don’t particularly want to do but you kinda have to? It can help to find the ‘why’. Maybe it’s to keep your boss happy (a necessary evil) or to do a favour for a contact of yours, which preserves either your reputation or an important relationship. If you remind yourself of why it matters to you, you’ll feel a bit more motivated. It can also help to give yourself a little reward for doing an annoying or boring task! Equally, if you’re always doing things that don’t motivate you, this might signal a wider problem: you may need to think about how you can move on to something that you’re more interested in.
• Consider reasons you may be feeling overwhelmed by a difficult task. Is there something else you need to learn about first? Do you need to ask for someone’s help, maybe team up with someone who’s good at the bit you find most difficult? It’s ok to find tasks hard, and it’s ok to need help with them. It’s also quite normal for others to be experts at things that you don’t have much training or experience in: it doesn’t make them smarter, it just means they know some stuff you don’t. If you acknowledge the need for help or further learning early on, it may make the task way easier and quicker in the long run.
• Sometimes my clients describe a numb or flat feeling when they’re trying to start a task. Sometimes it’s because of the task itself, sometimes it’s the time of day or location, or sometimes it’s a general feeling of burnout. If it’s a temporary feeling of low energy there are a few things you can try like snacks/caffeine, a quick walk or some exercise, changing the scenery (e.g. go to a cafe), or making the ‘moment’ more interesting (listening to music, doing the task with a friend etc). On the other hand if it’s burnout then you may need to make some more general lifestyle changes so that you’re resting/sleeping more and working a bit less: of course this one isn’t easy, but I have put some ideas at the bottom of the page.

Important but not Urgent Trap 2: ‘Levelling Up Can Wait’

Remember the kind of task we talked about before, the kind that gets neglected while we’re busy putting out fires? These are the big-picture goals we just never seem to find time for. Sometimes it’s because we’re too busy, or we convince yourselves that the special project that lights us up is nothing more than a pipe dream.

If you’re serious about following a cherished but non-urgent goal, here are some ideas:

• Remind yourself of why this is important to you. What would this mean to you if you accomplished it? How does it align with your values? What made you decide you wanted to do it in the first place? What difference do you think it might make, and who is it for?
• Break it down to the smallest first step. I like the saying “a job begun is a job half done” and it’s very often true. The main reason we don’t accomplish something is not because we lack the skills: it’s simply because we stop doing it. So make a start.
• Another of my favourite sayings is “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time..”. Even very big projects are really just a bunch of individual actions taken one at a time. So once you’ve started, think about what the next little step is.
• Commit to it by making it real. Tell someone that you intend to do it, and ask them to check in on you occasionally. This will make you more accountable. You could even choose a ‘mentor’ who you meet up with every couple of weeks. Perhaps it’s someone who’s also working on something similar, or perhaps it’s someone who’s a few steps ahead in this process and can hep you out.
• Hugh Lawrie famously said “There’s no such thing as ready”. I love this. Full disclosure, I often use it as a justification when I start projects only half-prepared: but it’s not a bad saying overall. Maybe don’t take big risks or submit a proposal to a major company in your industry if it’s half-baked, but the general idea is to make a start even if it means you discover that there are more things you need to learn or skilled people you need to partner with: this is all part of the path forward.
• Why shouldn’t it be you? I had this advice from my class tutor in high school, and it’s really stuck with me. I was talking to him about which subjects I might get an ‘A’ in and I doubted I’d get one in History because it’s a hard subject. He then said to me “They’re giving out the As to some people though, so why shouldn’t one of them be you?”. I love this. Obviously it’s not a call to action to become a pro tennis player if you’re 42 and still working on that dodgy backhand, but seriously: if you have the skill-set to level up and give something a go, what are you waiting for?

Urgent but Not Important Trap: ‘The fillers’

What if you’re someone who spends a lot of their time on things that actually aren’t very important in the big picture? Perhaps you’re not pushing yourself, your boss might be giving you a lot of ‘donkey work’ that doesn’t resonate with your goals, maybe you find it hard to sift out things that aren’t important, or perhaps your own perfectionism turns even basic tasks into a grind.

These ideas may help:

• If you’re being given very basic tasks, how can you show that you’re capable of more? Can you start doing some more advanced tasks, even if it’s just shadowing and/or you’re not getting paid any extra just yet?
• Deal with the FOMO feeling and sift out unimportant tasks. You don’t have to go to every conference, read every article, do every training. If it doesn’t add value in terms of your values and goals, and if it hasn’t been assigned as a direct instruction, there are certain things you just don’t have to do.
• Not every task has to be done to perfection. Doing every little thing perfectly does not mean you’re doing your job well or that you’re smart, or whatever: it might simply mean you’re wasting time. You wouldn’t spend 10 minutes making every coffee if you worked in a busy petrol station, right? This would be poor job performance in fact, as the wait times would be huge. Maybe if you work in a gourmet cafe with few customers this would be fine, but sometimes a situation calls for speed not perfection. Sometimes we’re so afraid of being judged that we can’t turn something in until it’s ‘just right’. This comes at a cost to our productivity and wellbeing though: sometimes we have to learn to let go, so that we can spend a realistic time on things and do a ‘good enough’ job.
• Are you spending extra time on the basic tasks because you’re feeling daunted by something harder or more important? If it happens often try to ask yourself “Is there something I’m avoiding here?” and find ways to tackle it step by step.

Not Urgent and Not Important Trap: ‘Time Suck’ Tasks

This one is hard, because there are often certain things in your job that are more fun than others, and it’s natural to want to do those. There are also a lot of distractions that are more fun than the work we’re supposed to be doing.

• List the things you catch yourself doing that aren’t important or urgent: maybe it’s planning your next holiday or embellishing your email signature, or just good old fashioned social media. Some people even recommend creating a “Not to do list”.
• Try to catch yourself when you’re doing these tasks instead of your real work. Why did it happen now? Were you tired, bored, overwhelmed?
• Some people find that they do best if they remove distractions, like by using a browser that blocks certain websites or putting your phone on focus mode. Or even moving certain apps off the main screen of your device.
• Try to do the important tasks first, and then the fun ones at the end of the day as a reward. I often use the phrase ‘putting the bitter before the sweet’ to describe this habit. You’ll then be using your best brainpower on the important things rather than the distractions
• Be mindful of assuming that ‘future you’ will want to do the not-fun tasks more than ‘current you’ does. The trouble is that they may be just as unappealing tomorrow, so if you have the time and energy today, see if you can give it a try
• As with the filler tasks, people are often drawn to fun but unimportant tasks because the other tasks are too daunting. If this is the case, figure out what you were putting off and try to tackle it step by step

Summary and Other Ideas

Ok, so we’ve covered a lot, so to summarise we’ve talked about:

• What to do if you’re only ever doing ‘urgent tasks’ and not working on long term development
• How to work gradually so that big deadlines don’t sneak up on you
• Taking non-urgent goals with high impact on your development more seriously
• Not spending your time on every little thing that isn’t important: sometimes you can skip it, and other times you can do a ‘just ok’ job of it
• Resisting time sucks that are fun but kinda waste your time

I’m also aware that changing habits is hard, so if it feels like I’m saying “just be more motivated” or “don’t procrastinate, duh” then here are a few other things you can check out to help with these areas:

• [Suggestions to improve motivation for unappealing tasks]
• [Managing procrastination when something is hard]
• [Defining your values]
• [Examining perfectionism]
• [Tips for prioritising]
• [Time blocking]
• [Managing burnout]