Episode 149 Transcript

Heather Porter (00:02.136)

Hey, welcome back to episode 149, urgent versus important. Hmm. We often get caught up in urgent tasks and we make these tasks the priority in our business, right? It's how we feel that we're spinning our wheels over and over and over again, every year, year on year, without feeling like we actually get anything important done in our business. So let me ask you a question.

 

What's the one thing that you need to take care of this week in order to move things forward in your business? Now remember, some things are urgent. Some things are important. Some things are urgent and important. However, it's the items that are important, but not necessarily urgent that often get left to last. But these are the things

 

that are needed to actually get you where you want to be in your business. So what's an important thing that you need to take care of this week or just at least get started with that's important but not necessarily urgent. Something that you need to do in your business to drive the needle forward so to speak, but it's not necessarily urgent. Perhaps this is something that you can build into your calendar.

 

It maybe is a question that you just ask yourself every single week. What is it that I need to work on to drive my business forward? It's the only way to truly get ahead in your business. These tasks, right? The tasks that are important but not necessarily urgent. Otherwise, you just become like a slave to your business and the needs of the business that you have right now. Let me restress that. You...

 

become a slave to the needs of your current business because you're just reactively doing everything that needs to be done, let's be honest, but maybe you won't drive the needle forward. And then because of that, you never really set aside time to create the business you actually want.

 

Heather Porter (02:17.93)

I'm telling you this because I'm like right in the middle of a lot of growth in my business right now. And it's something that kept coming up. It's like, have all these really incredible plans that I've shared with you guys at the start of the year in one of my podcasts. And I'm like, God, you know, we're already in March and there's still things that I want to do. feel like I'm now I'm getting behind, right? So this weekend, just one thing that helped me, I suppose, is I was staring at this unusually long to do list.

 

And I'm like, God, here we go. a of things. Number one is to remember to delegate. for me, this actually means that I need to to hire more help right now because I'm at a really interesting point where I have this incredible team and I was like over the weekend delegating and I even talked to them today on our check-in calls. There's like, remember, do not check any of the Slack messages over the weekend. It's not for you to action then it's just for me to get out of my head. Right. So

 

I've delegated to the max that I possibly can. And then I still have this tremendous task list and I'm like, okay, well I need more help instead of looking at it going, I'm going to need to do it, which by the way, I will need to do some of these things just to make sure things happen before I get more help. That's the nature of business, right? but I realized, okay, now I need, I need to get more help and that's something I need to do. Number two. So like when you guys are doing the same thing as me you're looking at these, these buildup of tasks,

 

make sure that you delegate and work out how to delegate because then you'll be another year down the path, same plateau, same place where you are now if you can't get things off your plate. Remember also the other thing I was thinking over the weekend was remember what tasks are tasks versus project plans. So oftentimes we set a task that is actually like more of a milestone. So we'll put like a to do in our calendar or project planning system.

 

It's actually more of like a larger milestone in a project rather than an individual task. And what happens with that, and you'll know that this is happening because you will have these tasks or to-dos and you keep pushing them away because they're too hard. A short, like an actual task shouldn't be like too hard that you stared at it go, I just cannot possibly do this. So it's probably more to-dos or tasks within that task.

 

Heather Porter (04:43.566)

So I was looking at my list as well. I'm like, actually, no, this is a plan. This is a project plan. This is a project plan. This has multiple tasks. And then, yeah, it's kind of daunting because you're like, oh great, I just added more work for myself and my team. However, it's also good because I'm getting things done, right? I'm getting things done that I want to get done to drive the needle forward on my business rather than just keep shoving these things into the future. So that's just a couple of things that came to my mind for helping, I guess, look at these tasks.

 

that are ultimately very, very, very important for your business. And how do you keep them moving and in your calendar as you go ahead? So over to you. What is something that you know that you need to work on that just keeps getting tossed aside for more urgent things that are happening? Make sure that you shift how you're doing things so you can make these items happen, even if it's just one a week. And just remember delegation.

 

versus perhaps turning it into multiple little tasks to actually make movement on it. Because if it feels too hard, it's probably more of a milestone or project rather than a task, right? So over to you guys, urgent versus important. You need both, obviously. But make sure you focus on those important tasks that are not necessarily urgent. All right, talk to you soon. Thanks as always for tuning in, bye.