Reading time: About 3 minutes
Is your task urgent, important or something for a “to-don’t” list? Make sure you label all of these different items accordingly…
[Before you read: I’m hosting a free class for subscribers on Tuesday, June 30/26 at 1 pm Pacific — Why Discipline Isn’t the Problem — with an extensive Q&A. Register here.]
Everyone talks about to-do lists. I want to talk about the other kind.
I’ve worked with writers for more than 25 years, and one pattern shows up constantly: the person who can’t seem to make progress isn’t lazy and isn’t stuck. They’re buried.
They have things on their list, and they’re trying to honour all of them at once, which is a bit like trying to walk through a doorway with your arms sticking out side-to-side.
The fix isn’t better time management. It’s deciding what not to do.
Why writers are especially bad at this
Writers tend to be curious people. Curious people accumulate interests, and interests become obligations, and obligations become a to-do list. Research this. Read that. Revise chapter three. Update the website. Start a newsletter. Learn Substack. Post more on Instagram. Build a platform. Network. Outline the next book while you’re at it.
None of these tasks is wrong. Some of them are even useful. But lumped together, they don’t make a plan, they form a wall.
And here’s what happens when you face a wall: you do the small things. You answer emails. You tidy your desk. You do everything except the writing that matters because the writing that matters feels like the hardest brick to pull out.
The urgency trap
We’re taught, somewhere along the way, that good workers handle everything. They keep the plates spinning.
But there’s a difference between urgent tasks and important ones, and most of us have them badly mixed up.
Urgent tasks flash and carry a whiff of mild emergency. The email that just arrived. The meeting someone booked for this afternoon. The invoice that needs sending. Urgent tasks are pushy. They position themselves at the front of the line and act like they belong there.
Important tasks are calmer. They don’t ping. Nobody is waiting on them this minute. They’re the chapter you’ve been meaning to get back to, the essay that’s been half-finished for two weeks, the book proposal you keep saying you’ll start on Monday. They don’t demand anything. They just wait.
And because they wait, we let them.
The day fills up with urgent things, and the important things stay on the list, week after week, gathering dust.
What this costs you
Here’s the problem. Urgent tasks, almost by definition, are other people’s priorities. When you spend your best writing hours clearing the urgent pile, you’re spending your best energy on someone else’s agenda.
Important tasks are yours. They’re the work that moves your writing life forward — not this afternoon, but over time.
Every time you let the urgent crowd out the important, you’re making a trade. You’re giving away the hours when your brain is sharpest and your concentration is deepest in exchange for the feeling that you handled things.
You handled things. But you didn’t write.
What a “to-don’t” list looks like
It doesn’t mean ignoring your responsibilities or blowing off deadlines. It means getting honest about which tasks deserve your best hours and giving the urgent stuff the time that’s left over. Not the other way around!
Look at your list and sort it: What’s important, and what’s merely urgent? And what shouldn’t be sitting on your desk at all? (Put those items on a “to-don’t” list.)
Perhaps surprisingly, the urgent things can usually wait an hour. Often until afternoon, when your energy has dipped and you’re less useful to the writing anyway. That’s actually a good time to handle admin-related tasks like answering email. You’re not wasting those hours. You’re matching the task to your capacity.
But the writing belongs in your best hours. Morning, for most people. Before the day gets its hands on you.
A practical place to start
Tonight, look at tomorrow’s to-do list. For each item, ask one question: Is this important, or is it urgent? Or is it unnecessary?
Important means it moves your writing life forward. It matters to you. It’s the reason you call yourself a writer.
Urgent means someone or something is making noise about it right now.
Unnecessary means it should go on a “to-don’t” list.
Put the important things at the top. Do those first, before you open your email, before you check your messages, before the urgent pile knows you’re awake.
You’ll be surprised how often the urgent things sort themselves out, or turn out not to matter, by the time you get to them.
The real cost of too many tasks
Here’s what no one tells you about a bloated to-do list: it doesn’t just eat your time. It eats your nerve.
When you’re carrying 15 obligations into your writing hour, you don’t arrive calm and ready. You arrive distracted, slightly guilty about everything you’re not doing and already planning what comes next. That’s not a writing state. That’s a coping state.
Protect the important work first. Let the urgent work take the scraps.
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The work I described today — protecting important tasks from the urgent pile — is exactly what I’ll be exploring in a free live class on Tuesday, June 30/26 at 1 pm Pacific: Why Discipline Isn’t the Problem. Spoiler: it’s not about trying harder. Join me for the class plus an extensive Q&A — details and registration here.
Something I’m loving right now…
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My video podcast last week addressed how to improve your grammar. You can watch the video or read the transcript, and you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel.
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Have you ever kept a “to-don’t” list? We can all learn from each other, so please, share your thoughts with my readers and me in the comments section, below. If you comment on today’s post (or any others) by June 30/26, I’ll put you in a draw for a digital copy of my first book, 8 1/2 Steps to Writing Faster, Better. To enter, please scroll down to the comments, directly underneath the related posts links, below. You don’t have to join Disqus to post! Read my tutorial to learn how to post as a guest. (It’s easy!)
