A Day in the Life of a Senior Leader

Chapter 3. The Seven States of Task Management

It does not matter where you are in your day; you will constantly be triaging tasks. Whether they are in your inbox or they jump you in the hallway, you need to make quick and definitive decisions about them. Here are seven options:

I am done with this task.

I finished. Good job. Victory. Next.

I am delegating this task to an accountable someone else.

I am still entirely responsible for this task, but by giving it to someone else, I am increasing the chance of completion while also allowing someone to learn.

I am rescheduling this task to a realistic date and time when I can think about it some more and complete it.

The most common reschedule targets are the evening at home, the next working day, or the following Saturday morning. Reschedules to the distant future are either external deadlines or wishful thinking.

I am making incremental progress but am not completing this task.

Incremental progress might mean updating the task name to make it more actionable, creating additional tasks to support this task, or doing some minor work on it. If this is the 18th time I’ve made incremental progress, I’m ignoring the task.

I am making meaningful progress but am not completing the task.

It is intriguing that I made meaningful progress but still need to complete it. Is this task too large? I wonder.

I am ignoring this task, and this probably isn’t the first time either.

I can’t yet admit that I will not complete this task. I can ...