Time-stressed Admin Pro? These Two Tactics Will Help Tame Your Schedule

There’s never enough time in an administrative professional’s day, is there? Whether you’re new to the role, had your responsibilities upgraded, or a seasoned pro whose new boss doesn’t seem to Get It just yet when it comes to assignments and deadlines, it’s always something.

You’re not just a specific executive’s go-to. You’re often the communications point between the C-Suite and the rest of the organization. You’re the event organizer, the company morale officer, the first point of contact when someone’s calling in with a question or an issue.

It’s no wonder, then, that time management can be both a way to manage stress and a source of stress itself. But these two key practices can help you get a handle on what you need to do and when you have to do it.

Always be prioritizing

Yes, that’s a riff on the sales mantra of “Always be closing.” It’s also the only way you can stay on top of your “to-do” list.

The Eisenhower, or Priority, Matrix is your friend. It’s a simple tool that allows you to sort tasks into four categories:

• Urgent and important: A task in this category is often unexpected, whether because some crisis has happened or an unforeseen opportunity has opened up. It’s also likely that you’ll be assigned this task by either your boss or another senior leader. Whatever else you’re doing in the moment, put it aside and get this new task done right away. 
• Urgent but not important: These are things that need to be done as soon as possible — but “possible” means just that. It won’t hurt to put them off — within reason. As soon as you have time, get these tasks done, but you don’t have to make time for them unless the deadline is coming up fast. 
• Important but not urgent: This is where you want to spend the bulk of your working time — on your regular (or at least recurring) duties, with reasonable and clearly defined timelines. What constitutes “reasonable?” That’s something to work out for every task, based upon your abilities, your other tasks, and the other person’s expectations. 
• Not important and not urgent: In a word, eh. Do them — or better yet, delegate them. You can delegate too, you know. If you insist on doing them yourself, save them for those after-lunch doldrums and reserve the sharp, motivated you for the important stuff.

Every time you’re given a new task, sort it into one of these four quadrants. More important, have a way to see just what’s in each. Don’t trust your memory. It will fail you, most likely when you can least afford that.

Get a timeline from everyone — especially the boss

Wait — especially the boss? Doesn’t the boss have priority, all the time?

All other things being equal, yes. But too often, requests from the boss get put automatically into the “urgent” row, even when they don’t belong there. That’s understandable — we all want to make our superiors happy — but any executive worthy of the office understands how priorities fit into the larger picture.

And if you demonstrate that grasp of strategies and tactics, by sorting your tasks most efficiently and meeting those timelines accordingly, that’s going to show the boss that you have a big-picture mindset as well. That can open career doors for you.

So no matter the task you’ve been assigned, or the request you’ve fielded from someone else in your company, ask two things:

• “When would you like to have this done by?”
• “What’s the hard deadline?”

Obviously, with your immediate superior you should be shooting for when they’d like to have a task completed. But you still need to know the hard deadline, because you can’t predict the urgent and important things that might throw off your ideal timeline.

Having this information will be especially helpful in that “important but not urgent” category. You can now organize by desired due date, with the hard deadline as a fallback position.

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Also, having timelines for all your current tasks will help you arrive at reasonable timelines for any new ones. You’ll know what bandwidth you have and what adjustments and tradeoffs you might have to make, and you can work that out up front instead of having to come back later and change things up.

These two tactics won’t magically produce more time in your busy day. They will, however, help you make the most of the hours you do have.