Time and Its Essence
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us,” says the great wizard Gandalf in Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring to the hobbit Frodo before the epic adventure of the destruction of the ring begins. I was reminded of this great wisdom recently when re-reading “Manage Attention, Not Time. A leader’s guide,” part of the McKinsey’s Leading Off Series (July 2022). This piece in turn reminded me of something I read over 20 years ago about a typical head of school’s attention deficit—and the importance of intervention! The basic premise here is that there is never enough time in the day to do everything you think you need to do. And the key is to understand fully what you need to do, rather than what you think you need to do.
Building on this premise for senior leaders in any organization, we can add that not prioritizing your work, and thus your worth as a leader, will result in your wasting both time and talent (yours and that of colleagues), and thus you will fail to do the job you were hired to do. A bit like Frodo wasting so much time on second breakfasts with Sam that he might lose the ring—the job he was hired to do!
The McKinsey article posits that 28% of time is lost by “knowledge workers” annually through distractions and lack of focus—while in the office it is emails and phones ringing, working from home it is family and household chores. Wherever you are, unless you set a focus for your day or your week, you will lose out to lower-level tasks that will sap your time and thus remove you from the central quest. Your time is in fact finite, and even though it may feel you have more of it than you need, you rarely do. Without a defined and concentrated plan for the time you have, the things that distract you, won’t just waste your time, they will drain your ability to pay further attention to those higher order tasks that only you can do, put in play or whose results will truly make a difference.
Part of the issue may lie in the commonly shared belief that if you can get a few concrete (lower level) tasks completed, you will feel better about your day. As a result, you will access the energy to conquer the more amorphous (higher level) tasks that you alone have been assigned or that rest in your in-box and no one else’s. I certainly believed in this approach when I was a head of school. Crafting a beautiful memo (that my wonderful assistant could easily have done), rearranging my office for an important meeting (countless trusty facilities crew members standing at the ready), anything quick and easily accomplished attracted my attention, rather than the project that would take hours to complete: a project that would require the highest order of brain power and the top level of attention.
One of SmarterWisdom’s core approaches to our leadership consulting work is to help leaders prioritize among the myriad of bright shiny things that beckon them each day. Step one is to prioritize, and step two is to stay true to the path you set for yourself.
So how do you prioritize? A good first step is to consider your work in levels, or as the McKinsey article suggests, gears, that is low, medium and high. Examine all the major projects that you are involved in—which takes precedence, what is next, and so on. If you stay focused on less important, mid-level tasks, you are likely to be stuck in medium gear. Yes, you can tootle along getting stuff done, but both you and your vehicle are not turning on the high-power capability that will allow you to move faster and cover more ground—and dive deeper. As a leader in your organization, you want to be in high gear a lot of the time. Think of high gear on the freeway and the large distances covered. Yes, you need to be paying more attention to your driving—but you will get you and your passengers to more places, including those far away ones you have deigned the most important to reach.
In terms of initial prioritization with the high-level tasks, consult others first to help you know if you are hitting the right list—or if a colleague or team member could take the lead. Settle in on what’s yours and let your board or your team know both what you are working on, and also tell them what is not a priority for you this week or month—and when you will expect get to it.
For a senior level leader setting annual priorities is important. It defines your focus and helps people see what has risen to the top for your attention. The McKinsey article suggests that “a simple rule of thumb for leaders is to identify five things to focus on for the year and spend 95 percent of your time doing those things.” As you follow this path forward, staying true to your defined focus, you also allow others to take on the work that, without this plan, you might try to do yourself. It is equally a way to establish the message about what is important and how others might contribute.
At the beginning of each month look at your high-level goals, then prioritize each week with a focus, keeping in mind any external deadlines (Board meeting? Check-in with your supervisor? Visit from an accreditation team?). Then each Monday review your goals for the week and adjust accordingly—are the people you need available, have they been given their deadlines, etc. Then, pay attention and stay focused. If any small things come across your desk or pop into your in-box, either delegate them to someone else or put them in a place where you can attend to them in a defined time later in the day or week—these require you to be in low gear, so just devote one or two hours to them in total and check them off as done.
Carve out your week thoughtfully, devoting the optimal time each day for your major projects. 45 minutes is a decent amount of time to focus, 90 minutes will be better. Try to find a space and physical set up that reduces distraction. Take a short walk before or after the focused time—for me this was often a quick trip to the cafeteria for conversation, or an open space where students had a break of some kind and we could chat. Easy, no further commitment. These distractions both kept me connected to the core of my work, and also readied me for a deep dive into something I had committed to completing.
Obviously it is also important to stay flexible. Prioritizing is just that—determining the order of importance. It is not a rigid timetable of things to be done—senior leaders in particular need to stay open to the challenges and changes that accompany any high-powered position.
The wise Gandalf asks us to decide about what to do with the time we are given. In addition, he says: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Staying focused on your organizational goals helps you forge a journey where you ensure that time is working in your favor, and where bringing high-level focus to key aspects of your work takes you to your destination—with your feet intact!