As project managers, we’ve all had times when our attention is being pulled from many different directions at once. As well as our day to day tasks, sometimes problems pop up that mean we need to firefight, stakeholders can demand new reports, and team members can seek new direction. All of this can happen despite our best efforts to keep the project on an even keel.

Now, the ability to jump from task to task like this and still be effective is important for a project manager, but I don’t want to talk about that today. No, today I want to talk about the benefit of behaving in the opposite manner, about the benefits of focus.

All of us have had times where we have had to jump from task to task. And I imagine a lot of us have been left feeling that at least some of those tasks were short-changed by us – the pressure we put ourselves under to swap to the next job meant we didn’t spend enough time on the task in hand.

We all know that we should recognise the difference between things that are urgent, and things that are important. But while we all know it, I’m sure many of us still fall into the trap of chasing the urgent, without looking at how important it is.

Sometimes, the best thing we can do is to resist the demands to switch from task to task. By focusing on one task, you gain the ability to really get to grips with it. You will be able to look deeper into the cause of any problems, and come up with more considered solutions.

So, let’s put these two ideas together: deciding on what is urgent and what is important; and the benefits of focus. So how do we merge them?

Well, when you have a lot of issues clamouring for your attention, take the time to focus on one task first – the task of deciding which of those issues are important, and which are urgent.

Once you’ve done that, you are in a better position to focus on those issues that are important and urgent. Those that are important but not urgent can wait until these are done. Those which are not important, but urgent, can be delegated or renegotiated. Those which are neither important or urgent, well, they can just wait!

One of the ways to think about this is to remember that your time is precious. You are being paid (hopefully well…) to use your time for the benefit of the project. So take just a little of that time to make sure the rest of it is spent in the most effective manner, in the best way to benefit the project.

Of course, this is easy in theory, not so easy in practice. How do you deal with these sort of whirlwind days? Do you end up running around firefighting, or do you manage to find the time to focus on what is important? Let me know!