In the previous chapter, you’ve prioritised the important projects you’re working on. If only (work)life was this easy - things come up on a daily basis if you collaborate with others.
To get a total overview of all the tasks - not just the important projects, it’s important to have all tasks or commitments in one place. For tasks, this is called a Master List. The Master List is one hierarchical level below the Project List from the previous chapter.
The Master List of all tasks
To figure out what the most important task to work on is, you need to have all of your commitments in one place.
If you don’t have a Master List, you’ll work on the task that is closest to you: an email that comes in or a request in Slack you respond to immediately. You’re not thinking long term and it’s impossible to make an impact if you work in this manner.
Without a list, ideas float around in your head. You jump up from your chair and remember you forgot to send that important email. Your mind is for having ideas, not storing them.
Getting things out of your mind and into a system you trust saves you mental load. The mental clarity lets you focus on what's important to work on. Get everything that is distracting you out of your head and store it all in one place.
You need one place that stores all of the tasks and projects, so you can prioritise them accordingly. The list with all tasks you have to do (regardless of if you have time to do them) is called the Master List.
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As you can see in this image, the Master List is used to create monthly, weekly and daily to-do lists. But first you need to have everything in one place.
It doesn't matter where you keep your Master List, as long as it has a way to sort and filter (like a spreadsheet). You can create the Master List on paper first if that works better for you. When you start working from the list, I recommend using software instead of a paper list, because it’s easier to update priority when new tasks are added.
There are many tools that are designed for task lists. The tools I recommend are: Asana, Notion, Trello, Google Sheets.
Add all tasks from Important Projects
Add the tasks to the Master List that belong to these projects you identified in the previous chapter:
- Important Recurring Projects
- Important One-Off Projects
- Less Important Recurring Projects
- Less Important One-Off Projects
Perform a mind-dump to fill the Master List
To fill the Master List, you need to get everything that’s in your head onto the list.
Write down one big list of everything you are working on. Here’s an in-depth way to perform a mind dump.
When you have an overview by creating a Master List, you’ll notice the different projects and tasks need different levels of attention. Some tasks need to be done today. Other tasks can be done next week or next month.
Questions to help you perform a Brain Dump
Write down all projects and tasks from the Project List List each of the projects and next steps associated with them. Run through the different marketing channels you’re working on.
These questions might help you to fill out the Master List:
- Anything unfinished for clients, colleagues, manager?
- Do you have meetings that need to be set up?
- Do you have starred / labelled emails that you should follow-up?
- Do you have any planning you need to do?
- Do you have any marketing calendar / brainstorm activities to do?
- Do you have any maintenance (to dashboard or campaigns) you’ve been delaying?
- Do you have any analysis / reporting that needs to be done?
- Anything on your physical desk that you have to do something with?
- Anything on your computer desktop or Google Drive that need action?
- What do you want to learn? What is on your learning & development plan?
It might take some time, but once you get the hang of it, the list will start to grow. Write down everything you can think of. Add personal tasks as well if you want, especially if you execute them during working hours.
The list will probably consist of the following:
- Tasks - one-off actions you can execute within 1 hour
- Project - anything that takes multiple actions or more than one sitting
- Reminders - future tasks or future projects that might come up
- Meetings - a fixed time to meet with someone else, usually to discuss or brainstorm (a.k.a. a meeting)
- Stressors - things that cause stress, either because they’re unclear or you don’t have enough time to do them
- Unimportant things - if you have a complete list, you’ve also written down unimportant tasks (and that’s OK). A master list should include everything!
Once you have written down all tasks and commitments, the next step is to categorise them based on the Eisenhower Matrix. This will help you get to an actionable list that follows priority of projects and fits the available working hours.
Once you have written down all tasks and commitments, the next step is to categorise them based on the Eisenhower Matrix. This will help you get to an actionable list that follows priority of projects and fits the available working hours.
Eisenhower Matrix
A helpful model to categorise tasks is the Eisenhower Matrix. It’s used to distinguish 4 categories:
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Quadrant 1: Important & Urgent
Tasks that need to be done right now. A colleague standing at your desk with a request, an urgent email coming in or a chat message you want to respond to. If you start your day by reading your email, this is the quadrant you’re working on.
Tasks that are important & urgent need to be done as soon as possible, but should be prevented from working in Quadrant 2 more often.
Quadrant 2: Important & not-urgent
Tasks in this quadrant are most beneficial to achieving the company goals and to make progress in your career as a marketer. Tasks include learning new skills, improving a process and drafting a marketing strategy. If you don’t execute these tasks, they will become urgent in the future.
Tasks that are important & not-urgent need to be scheduled to do them.
Quadrant 3: Not-Important & Urgent
Tasks in this quadrant are urgent, but not important to you or your role. Let’s say an ad has been disapproved and needs to be changed quickly. You receive the email, but you’re not a designer so you forward the email to a colleague. It’s urgent to forward the email, but not a task for you to perform.
Tasks that are not important and urgent should be delegated to someone else.
Quadrant 4: Not-Important & Not-Urgent
Tasks in this quadrant are distractions & time-wasters. Tasks include reading newsletters, reading the news, having a long brainstorming session on a topic that we’re not implementing this quarter. With constant distractions from notifications, email, chat and colleagues walking in, it’s nearly impossible to get things done.
Tasks in this quadrant should be avoided as much as possible.
Practical tips from 10 years running growth teams - translated into practical tips & insights you can implement directly.
Apply the Eisenhower Matrix to the Master List
Now that you know what the difference is between the 4 quadrants, let’s put them into practice. To prioritise everything on the master list, I recommend using the Eisenhower Matrix. To clarify, this exercise is meant to map all tasks on the important/urgent scale which is different from the Project List in the previous chapter.
Map all tasks on the 4 quadrants. Do it quickly and don’t think about it too much. You can always change things later.
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Once you’ve made the list definite, it’s time to take action.
Minimise distractions & time-wasters from Quadrant 4
Remove as many meetings from your calendar that don’t fit your goals, projects or tasks. Send a friendly email and explain why you’re not joining the meeting anymore. Read the guide on how to minimise distractions.
Remove as many tasks from this list by simply deleting them and deciding not to do them. Add them to a Not-To Do list if you want.
This enables you to make time to extinguish fires.
Make time to minimise Quadrant 1
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Schedule half a day (tomorrow or the day after) to solve issues and to prevent problems.
Taking the time to make things in order is sometimes called a firebreak. It’s a way to pause work and all incoming tasks, so you have time to prevent the pile of tasks from becoming larger.
This is your opportunity to take a break from running from meeting to meeting and from task to task. Turn off your phone, chat, email and start working on the Quadrant 1 List from your Master List.
Solve the most urgent problem first and continue until the list is done. Deciding to not do a task is the quickest way to complete it. Does the problem really have to be solved? How bad is it if you just let it go?
Ask for help from colleagues if you’re stuck. It’s much quicker to solve a problem together.
Spend more time working on Quadrant 2
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Start with the top priority recurring projects
If the ONE thing question didn’t bring clarity, see if you can start with the highest priority recurring project on your Project List. Starting with recurring projects means you have leverage in the future. The work you do today compounds into the next time you have to perform the work.
With time-wasters and the most urgent issues out of the way, you can start working on important and not-urgent tasks. The goal is to create time in your calendar to work on recurring tasks that are important and not-urgent.
Based on the Project List, you’ll schedule the important, recurring projects in your calendar. The time you have left will be used for important one-off projects. Once the important projects are completed, we’ll come back to the list and work on new projects.
What’s the first next action?
If you’ve added a list of successive tasks, it could be helpful to identify what the first action is you can take. Find the First Action step and add it to the top of the list. You want to start with that.
Schedule a recurring time-block in calendar for important tasks
The Project List & Master List are combined in this step. First, check what the most important recurring project is. Add a recurring time-block in your calendar as a placeholder to perform this work. This helps as a reminder for yourself (and your colleagues) and prevents people from scheduling meetings with you.
Examples: Funnel Analysis, Google Ads budget check last week, email list unsubscribe rate check.
Define the #1 important task
Once you’ve arrived at the Important Tasks, you still might have some uncertainty on where to begin. This might be the case if you have identified multiple Projects and added the Tasks to the Master List.
What’s the ONE Thing?
Once you have a list of all the important tasks, you might still have some unclarity. In Gary Keller’s great book “The ONE Thing” he helps to bring laser-focus to the next task.
Gary asks the question:
“What’s the ONE thing - that by doing it - will make everything else easier or unnecessary?”
Use this question to identify what the first thing is you should be working on. If that doesn’t work, you can use the ABCDE method to rank tasks in order of priority. Rank the tasks within Quadrant 2 on the order of priority. Start working on task #1.
Execute the Most Important Task
Create a focussed environment to execute the most interesting task. This is the ONE task that will push the entire project forward. SO don’t get distracted by notifications, emails or other distractions.
Start the day with 1 Quadrant 2 Task
Every day new issues come up and that’s OK. If you want to make long-term progress and impact on the organisation, I recommend working the first 2 hours of the day on Quadrant 2 tasks. Work ahead, have time. The goal is to work on preventing the fires from next week from ever happening. What do you need to work on to make everything run smoothly?
Once you come online after 2 hours, there is enough time to extinguish fires and solve issues.
Quadrant 3: Delegate tasks as much as possible
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Enable your team to make decisions independently. Learn how to communicate better and to steer on outcomes and deliverables, not micro-management and task-control. This step doesn’t apply to most marketers, so I’ll skip it in this guide.
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