When Everything Is a Priority, Nothing Is a Priority

One thing controlling fast jet aircraft taught me very quickly was that you simply couldn't treat everything as equally important. There could be several aircraft doing different things, information coming from different places and situations changing extremely quickly. Each aircraft mattered and flight safety was always at the forefront of what we did, but that didn't mean everything needed my attention at exactly the same moment.

You had to understand what mattered now, what could wait, where the greatest risk was and what information you needed to retain while dealing with something else. You also had to remain aware that something could change within seconds and completely alter your priorities. It sounds incredibly obvious when I write it now, but this took a huge amount of training and practice. In the early days, everything could feel important because you hadn't yet developed the experience and judgement to distinguish between what was important and what was genuinely urgent.

You have to imagine that nothing stands still in that role. Planes flying fast, climbing and descending don't stop, so decision making and constantly reassessing priorities is critical.

All these years later, I see managers struggling with exactly the same problem, although thankfully without fast jets involved! Their day starts with emails, Teams messages, meetings, deadlines, customer problems, staff issues, reports and somebody appearing with the inevitable, "Have you got five minutes?" Before they know it, everything has become urgent. My question is, is it really?

In This Article You Will Learn

In this article we'll explore why prioritisation is such an important management and leadership skill, what happens when managers treat everything as urgent, how pressure affects our ability to organise ourselves and why coaching can help managers recognise where their time and attention are actually going.

For me, good time management isn't really about squeezing more and more into the working day. Sometimes it's about becoming much clearer about what shouldn't be taking your attention in the first place.

Being Busy and Being Effective Are Not the Same Thing

Have you ever finished an incredibly busy day and wondered what you actually achieved? I certainly have. You can answer dozens of emails, attend several meetings, deal with interruptions and solve other people's problems, then reach the end of the day completely exhausted, thinking there was not much purpose to the day, a lack of a sense of achievement. Think about it you have been busy from beginning to end, but the one thing that genuinely needed your thinking has somehow moved to tomorrow.

I see this regularly with managers. Being busy can almost become a badge of honour. We talk about how many meetings we've attended, how full the diary is and how many emails are waiting for us, as though being overwhelmed somehow demonstrates our importance. I'm not convinced it does; sometimes ego plays a part here as well.

For me, good management isn't about how much activity you can create or how much you can fit into eight hours. It's about understanding where your time and attention will make the greatest difference, and that requires judgement as much as organisation, and is difficult to do.

When Everything Looks Important

When I was controlling fast jets, you learned to build and maintain a picture of what was happening around you. You couldn't focus entirely on one thing and forget everything else because the situation was constantly moving. You needed to deal with what required your immediate attention while still retaining awareness of everything else happening around you.

I think there's an interesting comparison with management. Managers can become so focused on whatever has landed immediately in front of them that they gradually lose sight of the wider picture. An email arrives, so they answer it. Someone asks a question, so they deal with it. A meeting appears in the diary, so they attend it. A member of the team brings them a problem, so they solve it.

Before long, their entire working day is being dictated by other people's priorities rather than their own. That's where I think managers need to stop occasionally and ask themselves a fairly simple question: Am I managing my workload, or is my workload managing me?

Urgent Doesn't Always Mean Important

One thing you quickly learned in an operational environment was that the thing demanding the most attention wasn't automatically the most important thing. Sometimes a quieter piece of information mattered more, and recognising that came down to judgement, experience, training and having the capacity to understand the wider picture.

I see something similar in organisations. The loudest person can get the manager's attention. The newest email suddenly moves to the top of the list. The person who continually asks for help receives more management time than the capable individual quietly getting on with their work. Eventually the manager tells me they simply don't have enough time. This is very common and creates such major issues.

Sometimes they genuinely don't. Workloads can be enormous and I'm not going to pretend every time-management problem can be solved with a nice model, another app or a better diary. However, sometimes the issue isn't the amount of time available, it's what we're choosing to do with it. That can be a much more uncomfortable area to explore and can be difficult to unpick. This is most definitely an area where coaching can help.

Your Attention Tells People What Matters

This is an area I don't think we talk about enough. Where a leader or manager spends their time sends a message to the people around them, whether that message is intentional or not. People don't often stop and ask themselves, how do the people around me actually experience me?

If you constantly cancel one-to-ones because something "more important" has appeared, what does that tell the individual? If development conversations are always moved but operational meetings never are, what does that say about how much you really value development? If the person who creates the most drama continually gets most of your attention, what behaviour might you unintentionally be reinforcing?

Managers don't just prioritise tasks. They prioritise people, conversations and behaviours as well, often without realising they're doing it. That's why I believe prioritisation is much more than a time-management skill; it is an important leadership and management skill.

Are You Solving Problems Other People Could Solve?

This is probably one of the biggest areas I see when working with managers. Someone brings them a problem and they immediately provide the answer. It's quick, it feels helpful and sometimes it's absolutely the right thing to do.

However, if this happens continually, the manager gradually becomes the person everybody needs before they can move forward. Then, a few months later, I hear the same manager saying, "My team needs to take more ownership."

That's when I become interested in the manager's behaviour as well as the team's.

If every problem comes back to you, every decision needs your approval and every question receives your answer, perhaps the team hasn't learned to think for themselves because they haven't needed to. Delegation isn't simply about giving somebody else more work. It's about giving people appropriate responsibility and allowing them to develop the confidence and competence to use it. That takes trust from both sides and, importantly, it also takes time.

Coaching Managers Around Time and Priorities

When I'm coaching someone who tells me they don't have enough time, I'm not particularly interested in immediately giving them another time-management technique. There are plenty of those already and most managers know the basics. I'm much more interested in understanding what is actually happening.

Where is their time going? What are they holding onto that somebody else could do? What do they find difficult to delegate? What do they keep saying yes to? Whose problems are they solving? What important things do they continually postpone because those things don't feel urgent?

One of my favourite questions in this situation is, "What would happen if you didn't do it?" Sometimes the answer is that something genuinely important would happen, which tells us the task needs attention. At other times there is quite a long pause followed by, "Actually...probably nothing."

That's where coaching can be incredibly useful because it allows someone to notice their own patterns rather than simply being told they need to manage their time better. Quite often people already know what they should be doing; the more interesting question is why they're not doing it.

Sometimes We Create Some of Our Own Pressure

This is something I've become increasingly interested in over the years because not all of the pressure we experience comes from outside us. A lot of it we create ourselves without realising it.

We say yes when we should probably say no, take work back because it's quicker to do it ourselves, attend meetings we don't really need to attend and respond immediately to things that could easily wait. We may avoid delegating because we're not completely confident somebody will do the task the way we would do it and then wonder why we're overwhelmed. There can be many individual reasons why these things happen, and that's why they need to be explored individually rather than assuming the same solution will work for everyone.

I'm certainly not suggesting organisations don't create unrealistic workloads because, of course, they do and I've seen plenty of examples. However, I also think effective managers need to be able to distinguish between pressure being placed upon them and pressure they're unintentionally creating for themselves. That's where self-awareness comes back into the conversation, something I discussed in my previous blog last week on decision making under pressure.

Priorities Can Change in Seconds

One thing about controlling fast jets was that priorities weren't fixed. Something could happen and suddenly the whole picture changed. What had been important seconds earlier might move down the list because something else now required your attention. You had to adapt without losing awareness of everything else that was happening. It was a constant process of reflecting, recognising, prioritising and taking action. You also learned not to be frightened of changing a decision when the situation changed. Changing your decision isn't necessarily a weakness; sometimes it's exactly the right thing to do.

Managers need the same flexibility, although obviously in a very different environment. We can plan our day perfectly at 8am and by 9.15am something has happened that makes parts of that plan irrelevant. That's working life and no diary system is going to prevent it.

Good organisation isn't about rigidly sticking to a list regardless of what's happening around you. It's about knowing why something is a priority and being prepared to reassess when circumstances genuinely change. The danger comes when everything that appears immediately becomes the new number one priority. For me, that's not adapting to change, it's simply reacting to it.

Being Organised Creates Thinking Space

Organisation was incredibly important when controlling aircraft because you needed enough mental capacity left to deal with the unexpected. If all of your attention was consumed simply trying to catch up with what had already happened, you were leaving yourself very little capacity to deal with what might happen next. And this was very dangerous, constant tidying up your work was essential.

I think there is an important lesson for managers here. If your diary, workload, priorities and responsibilities are constantly chaotic, you're using an enormous amount of mental energy simply trying to keep up. That leaves less space for thinking, and managers need thinking time.

They need time to notice what's happening within their team, consider future problems, develop people, reflect on decisions and sometimes simply stop before responding. We often treat thinking as though it isn't work because there isn't necessarily a visible output at the end of it. In reality, for leaders and managers, sometimes thinking is the most important work they do. Although people don’t see it and may think there is nothing going on..

You Don't Need to Be Available to Everyone All the Time

This might be slightly controversial, but I don't believe good management means being permanently available. There is a difference between being approachable and being constantly interruptible.

If a manager responds instantly to every message, email and request, the team quickly learns that they can access them at any moment. That sounds supportive, but it can also make it almost impossible for the manager to concentrate on anything requiring real thought. It can also unintentionally encourage dependency, because asking the manager becomes easier than thinking through the problem first.

Sometimes protecting your time isn't selfish, it's responsible management. The important part is communicating it properly so people know when they can access you, what genuinely needs immediate escalation and what can safely wait. Again, it comes back to clarity and priorities.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can managers prioritise their workload?

Managers can prioritise their workload by identifying what genuinely requires immediate attention, considering risk and business impact, delegating appropriately and regularly reassessing priorities as circumstances change. Effective prioritisation also means recognising which tasks don't require the manager's personal involvement.

Why is prioritisation important in leadership and management?

Prioritisation helps leaders and managers focus their time and attention on the work, people and decisions that will have the greatest impact rather than simply responding to whatever appears most urgent.

How can managers improve their time management?

Effective time management involves more than diary planning. Managers need to understand where their time is actually going, reduce unnecessary activity, delegate appropriately, protect thinking time and distinguish between genuinely urgent work and activity that can wait.

Why do managers struggle to delegate?

Managers may struggle to delegate because of lack of trust, perfectionism, habit, fear of losing control or simply believing completing the task themselves will be quicker. Coaching can help managers recognise these patterns and understand how their own behaviour may be contributing to their workload.

How can coaching help managers manage their workload?

Coaching helps managers examine how they use their time, identify behaviours contributing to overload and make more intentional decisions about priorities, delegation and boundaries. It can also help them understand why they continue with behaviours they already know aren't helping them.

How do leaders manage competing priorities?

Leaders manage competing priorities by maintaining awareness of the wider situation, considering risk and impact, communicating clearly and being prepared to change priorities when new information genuinely requires it. The important skill is being able to distinguish between something that is genuinely important and something that is simply demanding attention.

One Final Thought...

When I think back to controlling fast jet aircraft, organisation and prioritisation weren't nice additional skills to have. You had to develop them because there could be a lot happening at the same time and you still needed enough capacity to notice when something changed. Flight safety was always there, which meant you couldn't simply give everything equal attention and hope for the best. You had to understand what mattered now, what could wait and what might become important next.

When I look at management today, the environment is obviously completely different, but I think the principle is remarkably similar. Managers are surrounded by information, interruptions and demands on their time, and technology has probably made that even more challenging because people can reach us from almost anywhere at any time.

I don't think the answer is simply learning to work faster or finding another productivity tool. At some point, we have to make conscious decisions about what genuinely deserves our attention, what can wait and what perhaps shouldn't be sitting with us at all.

So perhaps that's the question to finish with: if everything on your list is a priority, have you really prioritised anything?

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