How do you prioritize work? Many of us prioritize based on urgency.

The task that has our attention is the task that receives our focus. During the workday, we flip back and forth between tasks, email, messaging, and meetings. We abandon half-complete tasks for newly assigned, urgent tasks. Abandoned work is often forgotten and the costs of context switching are time and quality. Yet the task that caused the interruption may feel urgent even though it is of lower importance. Meaning that high-value work is often left incomplete while lower-value urgent tasks are completed.

We confuse busyness with productivity. But, how to combat this? Knowledge work can learn from manufacturing, where years of improvements have developed methods to deliver high-quality work in minimal time.

Manufacturing optimizes production lines for flow. This means configuring lines for work to pass unobstructed from work-center to work-center until completion. The rate of flow determines the output of the production line. High flow rate = high output.

Photo by Vadim Sherbakov on Unsplash

Optimizing for flow can be counter-intuitive. It means choosing to leave unused capacity at each work-center. Complete, or 100% utilization seems like it should offer the highest output but that is a myth. Why? Because defects and rework will happen. Downtime will happen. If a resource is 100% utilized there is no capacity for rework. If any work-center is down or needs to perform rework, that center becomes a bottleneck. Downstream work-centers sit idle, and flow (overall output) is decreased.

There is a direct relationship between spare capacity at a work-center and faster production times. This is because spare capacity reduces the amount of time work sits in-queue at each work-center. Work travels through the entire process unobstructed. Additionally, spare capacity reduces the risk of delays to work on the production calendar because problems can be overcome using spare capacity and not causing impact.

A key component to flow is the orderly release of work into the production line. When an order comes to the factory it is evaluated for priority and added to the production schedule. When one job is completed raw materials are released into the system per the production schedule. Factories that are successful do not allow employees from one work-center to jump the queue and add work to another work-center. All work comes from a single, prioritized queue that releases work as capacity allows.

For some reason, it is simple to see how work should flow when it is on a manufacturing line. It makes sense that an orderly flow of work through the system produces the highest output. But, when it comes to knowledge work this orderly flow becomes less clear. There are emails to return, spreadsheets to update, and meetings to attend. How can the principle of flow be applied to an office setting?

There are many activities that are done at a computer, but they are all different. But for many of our individual tasks throughout the day, the order of work remains the same. A new employee onboarding has most of the same steps each time. Running payroll or delivering an invoice requires the same work steps each time. In this way, flow is achieved. But there is a caveat, the FEELING of urgency.

A manufacturing line may easily be restricted to receiving raw materials for processing from a single source. Rework can be incorporated as part of that queue. But, in an office a project can be delayed and have urgent work. A senior manager needs a report for a meeting with leadership this afternoon, a coworker isn't sure how to use the new software and needs your help. Sources of work are many and reducing those sources isn't realistic. How does one create flow in this circumstance? 

Resolving this requires three pieces, and while the first two steps are easier the third step is more difficult.

Begin by creating a single task list. Not holding items in the inbox, not jotting a task on a spreadsheet, but in a single list of EVERYTHING that needs to get done.

Step two is ordering your tasks by your chosen means. Below are two methods but you can also define your own.

The third step is having conversations, where possible, with colleagues about when a task realistically will be completed. This can be the most difficult but it is crucial. 

I have used both methods below and benefitted from each. My favorite is Stephen Covey's Importance and Urgency Matrix, but if your work is of similar urgency you may find more value in the Impact vs. Effort scale.

Covey presents this method in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Imagine four quadrants. Along the X-axis write Important | Not Important. Along the Y-axis write Urgent | Not Urgent. You end up with boxes that are:

Begin by ruthlessly evaluating your tasks. What is truly urgent versus what feels urgent? Then, evaluate your tasks by importance. This is subjective. It could be important to your company, to a project, or to your career. Once evaluated for each attribute, place them by priority into the appropriate quadrant. Any task that is in Quadrant 1 should be evaluated a second time to be sure it REALLY is urgent.

You will begin working the quadrants in order. As new tasks arrive you will evaluate and place them in the appropriate quadrant. Many of us spend much of our time working in Quadrants 1 and 3. In fact, we should spend most of our time in Quadrant 2 as this is where our most valuable work is done - unless you are actually a firefighter.

In reality, I almost never worked Quadrant 3 as I always have plenty of important work to do. I don't bother with Quadrant 4 as those tasks are generally not worth doing.

Quadrant 2 also includes items like exercise and spending time with family. This method is not only about improving your work, but it is about improving your life.

This model is a graph, not quadrants. The X-axis is Impact, high to low. The Y-axis is Effort, low to high.

Working from high-impact/low-effort pick off tasks and work them to completion, then pick off the next task.

Any system is fine, or you may create your own. Remember, a new task does not intrude on the task in-progress. Place it in the system and complete the new task when it's next in line. 

And be warned, it is difficult to determine what feels urgent vs. what is urgent. And conversations about why some tasks will not be top priority can be difficult at first. But, they are worth having to achieve flow and create maximum value.

Photo by Sanwal Deen on Unsplash

Prioritize your tasks, new and old, and work them from beginning to end. Work them in order of priority. Think hard about tasks that come in ultra-urgent. Are they actually important? My phone ringing feels urgent but usually, it’s not important. The loudest work is not always the right work. Take these steps and find your flow.

A version of this piece was originally published on July 18, 2017 on Medium.