Chapter 9. What to Do First

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What to Do First

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

—United States Army General George S. Patton

If you take nothing else away from reading this book, I hope you know that the purpose of UX content is to meet two categories of goals: those of the organization and those of the people who use the experience. To meet those goals, you’ll need to listen to people, prioritize the work, and collaborate with your team.

Decide What Is Urgent and What Is Important

Prioritizing the work is its own challenge, even when the priorities of the organization and the people using the experience are clear. Even when writing the work is tracked and the process is established, it can be difficult to make sense of what you should do first, or even next.

I like using the Eisenhower Matrix for UX content tasks, which categorizes work according to importance and urgency (Table 9-1). Any task or work item is either urgent or not urgent, and either important or not important. The four categories come with implied actions:

Urgent and important work should be done first.
Important but not urgent work should be scheduled for later.
Urgent but not important work should be delegated to people who find it important.
Work that is neither urgent nor important should be discarded.

Table 9-1. The Eisenhower Matrix, as applied to UX content tasks to be done