“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” - Steven Covey

It’s that time of year - corporate strategy meetings, team off-sites, global leadership meetings, board of director meetings; they’re coming fast and furious. If you’re like my clients you are preparing at least one presentation, probably a few. Some of my clients go into this process like a Chinese fire drill (which I realize isn’t exactly politically correct - I looked it up - it’s a pejorative expression originating from the 1900’s referring to a bucket brigade that is accomplishing nothing) so if I’ve offended you then so be it.

Now I love all these clients but let me explain what I mean by the fire drill. One of them emailed his 14 page draft with about 17 slides at 10 p.m. the night before our 7:30 a.m. coaching session. Another sent five separate documents related to her presentation with detailed notes five minutes before our 1-hour coaching call. A third guy just went MIA. We were scheduled to talk the day before a ”test run” with his boss and I never heard from him. Three days later he replied to my voice mail with an email apology - he was sorry but it hadn’t been ready, he thought it was okay, not sure, would like to talk...but was heading out for a long weekend...catch up next week...

Let me take a step back and say it’s fine to do some things “just in time.” If you’re asked to bring a salad to the neighbor’s backyard barbeque Saturday night you can run to the grocery store at 5:45, whip it together at their salad bar and show up looking like a hero. However, preparing a presentation is not like making salad. You can’t just toss it all together the day before you speak. And once you’re past the third grade, the dog ate my homework excuse just doesn’t fly.

Whenever clients fail to meet a deadline or go right up against it, you can take it to the bank - they’re doing the same thing at work. With a coach, they’re just flushing company money down the drain. At work it can be their careers. In their wake - they create chaos. It doesn’t just hurt them - it hurts everybody who is waiting on them and counting on them.

We all have pressure. Unless you work for the Save the Endangered Caterpillar division of the Environmental Protection Agency and your hours are 9 to 3:30 and everything can wait, you have deadlines. If you’re not busy you’re dead. For the sake of your career and your sanity it is time to stop pretending that you can do it all. You have to know your priorities and be ruthless about how you use your time.

The other day I was on the phone with a client and I recommended he make a list. 1 through 10. What are you priorities? What’s the next action step? When can you complete it? How will you know you’ve succeeded? It’s easy to do this with a coach or mentor but you can also do it for yourself.

1. priority - activity - deadline - measure of success
2. priority - activity - deadline - measure of success
3. priority - activity - deadline - measure of success

It’s simply amazing what happens when you write things down. Writing engages your brain, the list stimulates creativity and checking things off gets you pumped. You don’t need a ten hours of strategic naval gazing introspection to get your priorities on a piece of paper. They’re in your head anyway, for heavens sake. It took my client ten minutes.

Of course, if making a list was the start and end of success then we’d all be Warren Buffet. Once you have the list, you have to take one more step. SCHEDULE those activities ON YOUR CALENDAR. What gets scheduled gets done. You know this because if you switch over to your own calendar right now you’ll see a bunch of things scheduled today. You’re an efficient person. these will get done.

So stop trying to rearrange your to do list. Put the important stuff first. Get it on your calendar. Stop the madness, set priorities and put down your bucket. It’s spilling all over the place.