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"How do I manage my ridiculous to-do list?"
"How do I make time for the important things?"
"All my time is taken up with day to day stuff. How can I get to the planning and strategy stuff?"
The headlines
If you run a small organisation you’ve probably got everything on your to-do list from 'sort the bins' to 'put together a fundraising strategy'. I know from my own experience how overwhelming it can feel.
I have a thing for Sticky-note Squad (my mailing list community) where people can email me with questions and the most common one is “how do I make time for the big stuff?”- that might be planning or creative work or working out where your organisation is heading.
There isn’t an easy answer and this is NOT a productivity blog. It’s a lie that there’s a system which means you can get more done in less time. It’s a capitalist trap to get you working harder and thinking that doing it all is within reach if you can just work out the perfect scheduling/ list making/ timing system for getting things done. There’s no way of making more time. The only way is to do less. To decide what gets more time and what gets less time.
But there are ways to make it feel more manageable and less like your to-do list is taking over your life. This guide explains the thing I have found helpful in this- it’s called the important/ urgent matrix. But behind the jargon name is actually a pretty sensible way of learning to say no more, and making time for the important stuff.
However you manage it, you’re doing an incredible job at so many things. You can’t do everything.
The important/ urgent matrix
You’ve got 4 sections. Tasks might be important (to your organisation and your work), or urgent (need to get done asap or there’s a deadline). Or they can be both of those things, or neither. If you put everything on your to do list on sticky-notes you could sort it into these 4 categories.
Urgent and Important
So people quite sensibly spend quite a lot of time on tasks that sit here and if
something’s here it tends to get done. So things like a funder report: it’s urgent- there’s a deadline on it and it’s important- you’re required to do it and it may also lead to further funding
Urgent (but not important)
These tasks tend to end up taking up a lot of your to-do list and your time. Even though it doesn’t matter as much to your organisation, the urgency means we often jump into action and prioritise them over other things, before we’ve thought it through. Often it’s actually other people creating the urgency. For example, someone sends you an email saying “quick I need 100 words about your organisation for my document- that’s important for me but not really for you- but I need it by the end of the day”. But their bad planning is not your emergency. It’s just things that make a lot of noise and distraction but don’t actually do very much and people usually spend far too much time here.
Important (but not urgent)
This is the stuff that’s really important to your organisation, but it’s not urgent, it doesn’t have a specific deadline against it, so that means it always gets pushed to the bottom of the pile and doesn’t happen. It’s the big picture, longer-term, blue-sky-thinking stuff like strategy, policy overhaul, evaluation planning or staff wellbeing. What usually happens is that everything else demands attention and takes up time and this always gets left behind.
Not urgent or important
This is the ‘nice to have’ tasks, the busy-work stuff, like “wouldn’t it be nice to have branded pens?” or a board member suggested you should contact an organisation that may or may not be interesting to talk to. But also a LOT of meetings go into here- meetings that could have been an email or meetings it would be good to show your face at but don’t on their own do anything specific for your organisation. There are always hundreds of things it would be quite good to do, there are so many possibilities. But you can’t do everything. In the immortal words of Elsa the all powerful ice queen…Let It Go.
So how do you manage these?
Urgent and Important
Do it
This one, you do it- it has to be done
Urgent (but not important)
Delegate it
The standard advice with these tasks is to delegate them. But in our kind of organisations there’s usually not a team to delegate it to. So it could be about using AI to write something for you, or scheduling or automating tasks that have a deadline but aren’t as important. You can also try delegating it back to the person that requested it from you. So in our example task above of demanding 100 words, saying to them “I can’t get that to you by the end of the day so here’s the link to our website so you can grab something from there.” Or if the same people are the guilty parties in terms of making last minute requests that take up your time, putting in clear boundaries with them on turnaround times. Is anyone going to die if it doesn’t happen? If not, try saying no.
Important (but not urgent)
Diarise it
The only way these tasks get done is to book in the time. The corporate term is diarise it. Block it out in your calendar. Don’t log into email. Go into hiding. Leave the country. Protect that time like a lion protecting its cubs. There isn’t a magic answer- no one’s going to suddenly give you the time. You’re not going to get to the end of the other stuff on your list. Put it in your calendar and make it happen.
Not urgent or important
Ditch it
Tasks that fall into this one? Ditch them. You don’t need it, it’s nice to have. You can’t do everything. Let it go. Free yourself and move on.
What next?
If you want some help making time for the important things (strategy, evaluation, developing your programme, fundraising), then Sticky-note Strategy is designed for small non-profit organisations like yours. It helps you do all this, plus you get lots of cheerleading and a programme of support to create a visual plan for your organisation. There’s more about the Sticky-note Strategy programme here.
You can also join Sticky-note Squad and get a monthly dose of free support for your organisation to your inbox. Sign up below: