The Busy Monday

Nora opened her laptop on Monday morning to find twenty-three unread emails. Before she had finished the first one, a colleague leaned over the partition to ask about the ten o’clock meeting, and by the time she had found her notes, her phone was ringing. It was only a quarter past nine, and she already had the feeling of having fallen behind in a race that had not yet started.

She made a fresh cup of tea and forced herself to look at her situation as if it belonged to somebody else. Her manager needed a report before lunch, two clients were waiting for answers, and the three other calls on her list could safely wait until the afternoon. The arithmetic was uncomfortable but clear: if she responded to every new message the moment it arrived, the report would never be written.

She took a sheet of paper and divided it into three columns headed “urgent”, “important” and “later”. The client emails went to the top of the first column. The report was by far the largest task, so she decided to give it one hour of uninterrupted attention. Everything else, however pressing it felt, would have to wait its turn.

She sent two brief replies, closed her chat notifications and opened the report. Twenty minutes later she felt an almost physical urge to check her inbox. Instead of obeying it, she wrote the thought on her list and kept typing. When a colleague appeared at her desk, she explained politely that she would be glad to help as soon as the meeting was over. To her surprise, the colleague simply nodded and went away.

By lunchtime the report was finished. Nora still had a number of messages to answer, but now she knew exactly what each one required and in what order. The morning had not become any less busy, nor had the world grown more patient. She had merely stopped letting every notification decide what she would do next, and the difference in how the day felt was striking.