Figure 1. Four practices of commitment management: 1-tracking, 2-selecting, 3-executing, 4-capacity planning.

time money material personnel

4

now world

delegated
results

execute

3

importance
queued

1

mission

2

“implement a software tool”). Allen says to sort the incoming items into trash (ignore and delete), possibly useful (save in tickler file), reference (save in reference file), and actionable. You do actionable items immediately if they require two minutes or less (for example, a quick answer to an email message); otherwise you enqueue them in your to-do list and calendar, or you delegate them. You review your queues periodically to see if your delegations have completed and the orderings of lists reflects your current priorities. Once an item is in this system, you do not have to think about it and your mind is clear to focus on the tasks needing completion.

This story is incomplete in three ways. ( 1) It does not address the possibility of controlling the flow of stuff. ( 2) It does not make explicit that much of the stuff originates with you and your teams as you design actions to fulfill your own commitments. And ( 3), it does not deal with limitations on your capacity and the mood of overwhelm when you are beyond capacity. These three aspects take us to the next three practices.

Trump the Urgent
With the Important

Stephen Covey has discussed at length the notion of controlling what commitments you enter or decline. 2 The central question is: what exactly do you commit to? Covey maintains that the answers come from having a clear sense of mission. Just as organizations have mission statements, individuals should have personal mission statements. We can ignore requests that do not serve our mission, and we can (politely) ask the people making them to leave us alone. Covey counsels each of us to write down a mission statement, including our ongoing personal and professional commitments. Then we arrange our calendars to make sure that we allocate time sufficient for each major commitment.

Covey argues that good mission
statements help people distinguish
important requests from urgent re-
quests. Many people find themselves
overwhelmed with urgent but unim-
portant requests that consume all their
time. This is a double whammy—they
are frustrated at being unable to find
time for the important things and ex-
asperated over the sheer number of ur-
gent, time-wasting requests. The irony
is that many urgent requests are the re-
sult of previously neglected important
tasks. For example, if you make sure
you give excellent service to your cus-
tomers, you will not spend a lot of time
answering complaints.