The Busy Monday

Nora opened her email on Monday morning and saw twenty-three unread messages. Before she finished reading the first one, a colleague sent a chat message about a meeting at ten.

Nora’s first idea was to answer everything immediately. Then she looked at her desk and saw the unfinished report that her manager needed before lunch.

She took a piece of paper and made three columns: urgent, important, and later. The report went in the important column. Two client emails went in urgent. The rest could wait.

For one hour, Nora closed the chat and worked only on the report. She felt uncomfortable at first because new messages kept arriving, and by the end of the hour she had written most of it.

By lunchtime, not every task was finished. However, the most important one was almost ready, and she was pleased that she had worked on the report first.