Busy all day, and nothing important gets done
Sort the work. Then delegate the decisions, not just the tasks.
Teresa Torres puts it plainly: you have never in your entire life been able to do as much as you thought you could. Not this week, not any week. Managing your own time is the precondition for managing anyone else's, and most managers never book the hour it takes to do it.
The Eisenhower matrix is the tool for that hour. Urgent and important, do now. Important but not urgent, schedule it. Neither, delete it. Urgent but not important, delegate it.
Most managers stop at delegating the task, and that is the mistake. Product work runs on decisions, and the current information sits with the people closest to the work, not with you.
What you get
- The four quadrants with room to sort a real week
- A decision inventory, for the decisions currently routed through you
- A prompt for which of those belong closer to the work
Where should we send it?
One email with the worksheet. You can unsubscribe from anything else in one click.
On its way
Check your inbox. If it has not landed in a minute or two, look in promotions or spam, and add sam@startuppatterns.com to your contacts so the rest arrive.
Adapted from the Management chapter of The Mindful Product Company by Sam McAfee.