I often write on workload management. But even I occasionally get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests and assignments. (I’ll bet David Allen, the author of Getting Thing

s Done, does, too.) I’m in such a state right now.

In the last week I’ve had a quarterly board meeting, quarterly all employee meeting, monthly business review meetings, an all-day session with an outside consultant, a major author meeting, and my usual weekly one-on-one meetings with my direct reports. That doesn’t even account the 997 e-mails (yes, that’s the exact count as of 10 minutes ago) that I have received in the last two weeks or the various ad hoc phone calls, letters, and meetings. No wonder I feel overwhelmed!But your life is probably no different. The reality is that all of us have more work that we can possibly do. When you add to this the demands of a regular exercise routine, family, church, civic duties, and some semblance of a social life, it becomes impossible.

Here are six things you can do to cope. (Trust me, I am preaching to myself!)

1. Acknowledge that you can’t do it all. The idea that you will eventually get caught up is a myth. It’s impossible. You have more work than you can reasonably expect to get done. And unfortunately, your workload is not static. Even now, while you are reading this, your inbox is filling up with fresh new tasks.
2. Accept the fact that some things won’t get done at all. This flows from the first item. You have to make peace with the fact that you must leave some things undone—for the sake of your own sanity.
3. Practice workload triage. On the battlefield, medics have to decide where to apply their limited resources. They can’t help everyone. According to Dictionary.com, “triage” is
   

   the process of sorting victims, as of a battle or disaster, to determine medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors.”

   Some patients will survive without medical care. Some won’t survive even if they have medical care. Applying triage means ignoring these two groups and focusing on those that will only survive with medical care. Your workload is similar. You must know which things you can safely ignore and which things demand your intervention.

4. Categorize your tasks by priority. In my view, this is the one thing missing from David Allen’s system. It assumes that all tasks are equal. Or to say it another way, you can only decide a task’s relative priority in the moment.

   In my experience, this does not work. I end up with hundreds of tasks I must review every day. My eyes glaze over, and I fall prey to what Charles Ummel calls the Tyranny of the Urgent.

   Instead, I like the Franklin-Covey method of assigning a priority tag to each task:

   A—urgent and important
   B—important but not urgent
   C—urgent but not important
   D—not urgent or important

   I personally categorize each task with one of these tags. At the beginning of each day, I focus on my A’s first. If I get those done, I move to the B’s, then the C’s.

5. Practice “intentional neglect.” Many people practice the opposite—unintentional neglect. They forget to do something or they are late in meeting their deadlines. They don’t like this behavior and neither do those who are counting on them. But this inevitably happens if you don’t practice intentional neglect. You must decide in advance that you will not do category D tasks. They are neither urgent nor important. They are simply not worthy of your time or attention.

   “But,” you may ask, “what about tasks that I don’t think are important but someone else does?” Great question. Let me give you an example. Sometimes my Board (yes, even I have a “boss”) asks me to do something that I think is a waste of time. I don’t regard it as important. But, because I serve at their pleasure, I re-categorize it in my mind as important. Why? Because keeping my Board happy is very important. I really like my job and would like to keep it. Sometimes, it is a simple matter of re-framing the task.

   On the other hand, I recently received a lunch request from a woman who is an acquaintance. She is looking for a job and wanted to discuss career possibilities at Thomas Nelson. This is no doubt important to her and possibly urgent. For me it is neither, so I redirected her to someone in our Human Resources department.

   The bottom line is that you must learn to say “no” to the unimportant tasks, so you can say “yes” to the important tasks and actually get them done.

6. Do the next most important thing next. Multi-tasking is a myth. You really can’t do more than one thing at a time—at least more than one thing that requires focused attention. So get your list of priorities, do the most important thing first, then move to the next item and work down your list.

For today, I have six things I’d like to accomplish: one of them is an A, four are Bs, and one is a C. I’m starting at the top and working down the list.

Related posts:

• Calendar Triage
• The Importance of the Weekly Review
• The Not To-Do List
• Getting Things Done: An Update
• Question: How Do You Cope with Your Post-Vacation Workload?