How to Stop Putting Out Fires

Category: Blog

July 5, 2022 | Mark Altman 

Category:

Managing yourself

The Problem:

Most days, you find yourself reacting to urgent task after urgent task, putting out fires, rather than proactively tackling your most important projects. 

The Root Cause: 

• Company culture doesn’t promote self-advocacy or setting boundaries.
• Your perception is that there is no time to address higher priorities.
• You may feel that if you don’t respond to high-urgency tasks immediately, you won’t meet expectations and/or there will be negative consequences. 

The Resolution: 

Build Self-Awareness 

First, build self-awareness by recognizing the consequences of constantly putting out fires and behaving reactively: 

1. You may be missing opportunities to set and manage expectations. 
2. You may not have a method to prioritize your high-level responsibilities proactively. 
3. You may not be communicating updates on projects and tasks to your team in a timely manner. 

Include on your list other consequences you are experiencing. By taking the time to understand the consequences of this behavior, you will be more motivated to change it. 

Set Reminders to Refocus and Reprioritize 

Use your phone or calendar to help you refocus and reprioritize. Set two reminders for yourself at 11am and 2pm to pause, take a breath, and ensure that you are working on your highest-priority tasks. If meetings come up at those times, find two other checkpoints over the course of the day to look up and disrupt your thought process. 

Do a Daily Sweep-Through 

Once a day, do a sweep-through of your Slack messages, texts, incoming emails and voicemails, Asana, etc. – any place you communicate with your team – and determine who needs to be updated on your projects and tasks. 

1. Note all tasks that require communication/follow-up, including: 
   1. Inbound emails
   2. Texts
   3. Teams/Slack messages
   4. Sent items
2. Assign deadlines to those tasks
3. Determine who on your team needs updates on those tasks
4. Communicate updates
5. Ensure you are up to date on all upcoming meetings
   1. Reschedule and cancel as needed
6. Use the Eisenhower Box to reassign things that aren’t priorities 

Takeaways: 

• The first step in any habit change is to build awareness to catch yourself in your old habits of being reactive. 
• To implement a new behavior, identify the motivators and benefits of doing so. Shift your mindset from “have to” and instead think “want to.” 
• Using the simple sweep-through method allows you to check all sources of communication to reset and manage your own and other people’s expectations. 

Content derived from the MindsetGo Training/Coaching Program: Managing Yourself 

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