I think this will be helpful for me. I've just added a recurring planning time block at the end of my day. With such a tight schedule, how do you handle interruptions, especially with "urgent" asks? A big part of my current role seems to be tackling urgent requests from more senior employees. It often blows up my attempts to tackle my one big thing because I don't want to be seen as unresponsive.
Really good question. And one that's a lot harder to solve in reality than talk about.
A few things that have been helpful for us:
1. Don't over schedule yourself (identify your day's "#1 most important" task and block out time for it. But also be sure to leave ~2+ hours of "flex time" to handle interruptions, especially if they happen on a regular basis. If they don't happen, then you have 2+ hours to work on other items but you at least have planned for the excess capacity)
2. When a more senior person interrupts you with an urgent task (X), you then should feel empowered to have a "trade off discussion". Here's how it goes: "I'd be happy to work on X. However, my current priorities are also ABC... Given my limited bandwidth, can you help me determine what should be deprioritized from ABC to make room for X?".
The advantage of the "tradeoff discussion" is that it forces your boss to help you navigate the reality of tradeoffs in a professional manner and maintains your reputation as being responsive.
I think this will be helpful for me. I've just added a recurring planning time block at the end of my day. With such a tight schedule, how do you handle interruptions, especially with "urgent" asks? A big part of my current role seems to be tackling urgent requests from more senior employees. It often blows up my attempts to tackle my one big thing because I don't want to be seen as unresponsive.
Really good question. And one that's a lot harder to solve in reality than talk about.
A few things that have been helpful for us:
1. Don't over schedule yourself (identify your day's "#1 most important" task and block out time for it. But also be sure to leave ~2+ hours of "flex time" to handle interruptions, especially if they happen on a regular basis. If they don't happen, then you have 2+ hours to work on other items but you at least have planned for the excess capacity)
2. When a more senior person interrupts you with an urgent task (X), you then should feel empowered to have a "trade off discussion". Here's how it goes: "I'd be happy to work on X. However, my current priorities are also ABC... Given my limited bandwidth, can you help me determine what should be deprioritized from ABC to make room for X?".
The advantage of the "tradeoff discussion" is that it forces your boss to help you navigate the reality of tradeoffs in a professional manner and maintains your reputation as being responsive.